


Dæmon

by Tigris_Schrodinger



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Bill Denbrough Being an Idiot, Blood and Injury, Canon - IT (Book/Movie/Miniseries Combination), Canon Relationships, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Coming of Age, Crazy Henry Bowers, Cross-Posted on Wattpad, Dark Fantasy, Dark Tower References, Dead Georgie Denbrough, Deadlights (IT), Derry (Stephen King), Derry Curse (Stephen King), Derry Ka-Tet (Stephen King), Eddie Kaspbrak & Richie Tozier Being Idiots, Eventual Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh, Eventual Romance, F/M, Friendship/Love, Gan is God (Stephen King), Gen, Henry Bowers is His Own Warning, Idiots in Love, Losers Club (IT) Friendship, Macroverse (IT), Mike Hanlon Deserves Love, Pennywise is His Own Warning (IT), Psychological Horror, Reader-Insert, Richie Tozier Being Richie Tozier, Richie Tozier is a Dork, Slow To Update, Spider Pennywise (IT), Spoilers, Stanley Uris Takes a Bath, Tags Contain Spoilers, The Author Regrets Nothing, The Losers Club Are Good Friends (IT), The Ritual of Chüd, The Turtle CAN Help Us (IT), Thriller
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-20
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:21:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 11
Words: 60,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24816031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tigris_Schrodinger/pseuds/Tigris_Schrodinger
Summary: Can you hear them? Can you hear their screams? The screams of your brothers and sisters? Their screams of anguish and suffering? I know you can hear them. You aren't the first to try and you aren't going to be the last to fail. And do you really think you can defeat me with the help of your friends? With the help of your precious Bill Denbrough? Well no, I'm sorry to say you're wrong. Your friends are going to die, he is going to die too. All of your loved ones are going to die. And when no one else is left, you will voluntarily surrender to me. You will suffer a fate worse than death itself, I promise you. That stupid Turtle can't save you this time, damn Dæmon.©Tigris Schrödinger. All rights reserved. The plagiarism, adaptation or translation of this or any other story isn't admitted. Almost all the characters in this story are property of Stephen King, with the exception of you and original characters like Clarissa Aubrey.
Relationships: Bill Denbrough/Reader, Bill Denbrough/You, Henry Bowers/Reader, Pennywise (IT)/Reader, The Losers Club (IT)/Reader
Comments: 21
Kudos: 49





	1. Little Turtle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello reader, it's a pleasure to know that the story has caught your attention and I thank you for that. I want to explain a few things before you start your adventure. First of all, Dæmon is a story that I've been posting originally on Wattpad (you can find me there with the same name), but I decided to start posting it here as well. And that brings me to the second point: the number of published chapters, at the moment, isn't the same on both sites. So, if you are interested in reading more chapters of this story, you can go to Wattpad. But don't worry, this is only temporary, because soon the story will be on the same level on both sites and will be updated simultaneously. The last point is that the Spanish version of this and other stories that will come in the future will be solely and exclusively on Wattpad for various reasons. Although, of course, I can change my mind at the request of any reader who asks me otherwise.
> 
> And with the above clarified, I hope you enjoy reading this story a lot and, at the same time, I apologize in advance for any possible grammatical error or misspelling that you can find here. English is not my native language.

William Denbrough, also known as Stuttering Bill or Big Bill, never forgot the day he first saw you: September 15, 1986. It was a cloudy Monday in Derry, a small town in the state of Maine, United States. His parents, Zack and Sharon Denbrough, were working. His father worked as an electrician at Bangor Hydroelectric while his mother gave private piano lessons to a college girl in West Broadway, an area of Derry where wealthier families live. That left the house with only two people. He and his four-year-old little brother, George Elmer Denbrough —sponsored as Georgie—, who was sick from a common cold. His fever was low but persistent and his sneezing occurred quite frequently, forcing the older of the Denbrough brothers to stay home to take care of him.

Several blankets, a handkerchief and an occasional teaspoon of syrup were the necessary supplements to calm little Georgie, who only complained exaggeratedly of how bad he felt —something that seemed funny to Bill—. Once Georgie stopped making dramas after falling asleep before the effects of the dream, Bill decided to return to his own room to continue with the drawing he had pending to finish in his notebook. The drawing was about three little birds that Bill himself had seen over the weekend on a tree branch near his house. The feathers of these little birds were so bright and colorful in Bill's eyes that he couldn't resist writing them in pencil on one of the pages of his notebook. Now there was only to color the drawing and possibly deliver it as a gift in good faith to one of his best friends, Stanley Uris, a Jewish boy who had a bird watching hobby.

However, a noise outside interrupted his concentration on the drawing at times, causing Bill to tense both his forehead and his eyebrows in some discomfort and confusion. It was strange. Normally at that time of the morning, Witcham Street was quietly quiet until children and adolescents returned in the afternoon to give their respective school classes. And with the exception of the neighbors next door (a couple of older adults who, from time to time, turned on the radio to listen to their favorite stations), there shouldn't be so much noise in the neighborhood. Much less if that thunderous noise was caused by the powerful engine of a truck. Wait, a truck?

Bill came curiously to the main window of his room to observe through it what was happening out there. A large and long moving truck of the American Red Ball company was parking in the house in front of his. A thick gray smoke was coming out of the exhaust pipe and almost the entire vehicle shuddered subtly by the force of the engine until it turned off, stopping everything. Then, two uniformed men came out of the truck cabin, their shirts were white and they had the company logo engraved on the left pocket. Their cloth pants, as well as the cap on their heads, were a reddish tone as their shoes simply glowed in black. Both men went quickly to the trailer to open it and thus starting to lower the boxes inside. The cardboard boxes were of all sizes, the largest being the ones with the greatest weight while the medium and small ones were rather light but very fragile in comparison.

Seeing how these men carried all these boxes —one by one— and deposited them in the yard of that house, Bill wondered who his new neighbors would be. A family with children? A just married couple? A group of young university students? Who knows? Although, to his good luck, within a few minutes the answer to his questions would reach Witcham Street in the form of a 1980 Ford F150. The car was a bright and impeccable red color, it was mobilized with a certain elegance and when it was parked at the entrance of the house, it’s when people who Bill waited so long to see got out of the car.

The first person was an adult woman of average height and a somewhat thin but firm physical build. Her tanned skin went hand in hand with her curly blond hair that fluttered next to the black flowered dress she wore while walking towards the workers to greet them cordially. Her honest smile and her eyes like coffee glowed in excitement as she introduced the other person who went out of the car. That person was you and Bill, for some reason, he couldn’t divert his watchful eye on you. You seemed to be a typical girl of his age —10 years at the time— your dress consisted of a light t-shirt and blue jean pants that matched your shoes. Between your chest and your arms you had a tightly hugged turtle plush when you approached the blonde woman's side and tried to greet with a nervous smile the pair of uniformed men.

Bill's heart softened at that scene. The way that woman and you were so close to each other, she caressing your head in love to give you confidence while you now looked at men with a calmer and more natural countenance, only showed Bill the close relationship that both of you shared. The same kind of relationship that any child should share with their parents, as well as the one he and Georgie used to have, although it was much more noticeable to his younger brother for obvious reasons. One of your hands was intertwined at times with your mother when she went to open the door of the house, then let you freely explore the interior of it with your stuffed animal while she helped the two workers to accommodate the boxes inside the house.

 _They seem to be good people..._ , Bill thought as he decided to concentrate again on the coloring of the birds in his notebook, even though his mind was wandering in you and in your turtle stuffed animal that he had unconsciously started drawing on a new page. _The voice says to trust my instinct. They are good people._

The rest of the morning was blurry for Bill: if he wasn't sitting at his desk perfecting his hypnotic turtle drawing, then he would spend it in his little brother's room to keep him company once he woke up and complained again comically of his ailments. When the opportunity presented itself, he occasionally looked in the direction of your house. The men along with the moving truck had already left the neighborhood, all the boxes that were previously scattered in the yard had disappeared and Bill assumed that your mother and you were now simply in the whole exhaustive process of unpacking things to sort them out in the new home.

“How much do you look, Billy?” Georgie asked suddenly, interrupting Bill's attention to the window and returning it to his younger brother. His small but swollen nose was flushed from sneezing so much in his handkerchief, his skin was somewhat pale and pearly from an ironically cold sweat that moistened his pajamas a little.

“No-nothing! I didn’t s-s-see anything!” Bill exclaimed stuttering and tried to change the subject immediately, although he failed flatly when he noticed that his brother was looking at him not so convinced of his accelerated response. Stuttering was one of those aspects that characterized Bill from a very young age. No matter who he talked to: if they were his parents, friends, classmates or school teachers, he couldn't help stuttering to a greater or lesser extent. That's why he earned the nickname: Stuttering Bill.

But with Georgie it was a different story. In front of Georgie, his stuttering was almost non-existent for some strange reason, as if his younger brother was a kind of antidote that relieved his condition. However, there were moments —like this one— when Bill stuttered as he was terribly anxious or nervous, his shocked words betrayed him. He had no choice but to sigh and tell Georgie the truth, “Is that thu-thu-today two people muh-muh-moved... And one of-of them is a girl…”

“A GIRL?!”

“Shushhh! You don't need to sh-sh-shout, Georgie!”

“I’m sorry! You like that girl, Billy?”

“I didn’t s-s-say that… DON’T LOOK AT ME LIKE THAT!”

“YOU LIKE HER! YOU LIKE HER SO MUCH!”

“Sh-sh-shut up, Georgie!”

Bill had to endure the mocking comments and awkward questions of his brother throughout the afternoon. Georgie wanted to know everything about you, from how you looked and what your possible hobbies might be to how your personality and your future relationship with the two of you would be (from simple neighbors or friends, even becoming best friends and, in the special case Bill, possibly something more). And even though the whole affair itself was uncomfortably tolerable for Bill, his red cheeks and his dodging gaze were proof of that, at least a part of him was glad to notice that his little brother seemed to be better of health compared to how he felt in the early morning. Georgie was as deep in you as his new topic of interest, that he no longer even remembered that he was ill in the first place and that drew a faint smile on Bill's lips.

When his parents arrived at the house at the end of the afternoon, almost night, Georgie had fallen asleep again but this time without the need of blankets and handkerchief. Bill, on the other hand, was sitting in an armchair in the living room in the company of his father who watched television while his mother did some chores in the kitchen. The reason why he was in the room at that time was quite unusual, since every night and after having family dinner, Bill always returned almost immediately to his room to draw, do homework or sleep. On this rare occasion, when everyone finished eating and his father was responsible for bringing a sleepy Georgie to his bed, his mother asked almost immediately if he could help her with something, to which Bill simply nodded.

Without questions or thoughts, Bill waited sitting patiently from that chair for his mother to finish whatever she was doing in the kitchen. He knew absolutely nothing about her plans and where he should help her, but he hoped his mother would tell him soon. After several minutes, Sharon Denbrough finally left the kitchen with a wicker basket in her hands and Bill looked at the object filled with food in confusion for a few seconds before reacting. New neighbors in Witcham, his mother preparing a welcome basket and he had to... oh, shit.

“Son, I don't know if you were aware of this but today an old friend of mine with her daughter moved to our street. I was planning to give them this basket as a welcome gesture and I was wondering if you could join me to greet them”, if his own thoughts no longer disturbed him enough, then his mother's words made the situation he was worse. You were the daughter of a friend of her mother? Now Bill Denbrough officially felt doubly screwed up.

On the outside, Bill quietly agreed to go with his mother to your house to deliver the basket, although inside, he was screaming loudly that he didn't want to go. Bill felt like he was going to ruin everything just by opening his mouth, that his stuttering was going to make you laugh at him, or worse, that both your mother and you thought he was a kind of phenomenon and that you wouldn't talk to him or look at him never more in your life. The simple thought of that possible scenario made Bill dread. Georgie was more apt for that kind of job, not him. Maybe if he just kept his mouth shut and not spoken during the entire visit, his chances of appearing to be a normal boy and not ruining him in the process could be more successful.

The moment he and his mother —and the basket in one hand— reached the door of your home, tapping it to warn of their presence, Bill began to implore in his mind. He asked any being to listen to him: God, the Turtle, whoever... to help him overcome any difficulties that night. A few seconds later, the door opened and the blond woman in the morning appeared. On her lips there was an inviting smile although her gaze was somewhat perplexed and confused as she alternated it between Bill and his mother before a spark of recognition swept across her features.

“Sharon?”

“Yes, Clarissa! It’s me!”

“Oh, Sharon! So many years have passed since the last time I saw you!”

If not for Bill, at that time the basket would have fallen and the food was scattered on the floor, but the hug between the two women was inevitable. They looked at each other jovially, without letting go in a second and exclaiming in happiness to understand that what was happening was real. Bill, admiring that scene, wondered if he and his friends in a couple of years would be so happy to meet again. The transition from school to university or from university to work was a very common separation event for groups of colleagues and friends. That is why, when his mother separated from the other woman and the latter addressed to Bill, he watched her with some joy that he felt for her and his own mother.

“You must be Sharon's eldest son. William, right? Although according to what your mother has told me, you prefer everyone to call you Bill”, he quickly nodded and she continued talking with a kind smile. “Well, Bill, it’s a pleasure to meet you in person. My name is Clarissa Aubrey and I’m an old friend of your mother”.

Clarissa extended her hand in greeting to Bill and he grabbed it almost immediately, squeezing a little before releasing it seconds later. “Surely you want to meet my daughter. I feel you will have much more fun playing with her than listening to your mother and me talking about boring adult things”.

“B-b-but I can’t…” Bill tried to say before closing his mouth again, realizing his mistake. He had begun to stutter in front of your mother, he had already spoiled everything. Now he felt how the desire to cry in sorrow was getting bigger in his chest as pessimistic thoughts raced through his poor tortured mind. _This can’t be happening… This can’t be happening…_

However, a hand on his shoulder brought him back to reality. The touch of that hand was soft, light as a feather but quite comforting, something Bill needed for the moment. He focused his attention on your mother, who had stooped a little to keep up while her other hand was taking the basket of his hands. Her gaze was sympathetic towards him. “Bill, don't be afraid to be yourself with me. Nor with my daughter. I can promise you here and now that neither of us will treat you differently for it. On the contrary, when my daughter knows you, she... no, it is better that you discover it yourself. Right now she is in the backyard, take the time to talk to her quietly. Believe me, you will not regret it.”

“Alright… I’ll duh-do it”, Bill said with a tone of more confidence in his voice. Thanks to your mother's generous words, that courage that has always been within him seemed to slowly resurface outside, and that in itself was a good thing.

Step by step, Bill went into your home in search of the back door to get to the patio while his mother and yours went to the living room to sit in comfort. One last look with his own mother confirmed everything. Her eyes reflected some uncertainty but her slight smile encouraged him to continue. And so he did. When he reached the door knob, he hesitated for a second when he touched it. The palm of both hands sweated nervously and his heart beat like a marathon runner after a good run, but that didn't stop him. He turned the soft knob to open the door and left the backyard calmly...

Bill watched in amazement as a large oak tree rose in the middle of the darkened courtyard. Under its leafy leaves a thick trunk extended to the roots that protruded slightly from the earth. It was in one of those roots, leaning against the trunk, that Bill found you. You were apparently asleep, your facial expression was relaxed as the rest of your body while you took a deep breath and between your legs your turtle stuffed animal lay so comfortably that, for a little, Bill thought it was a real turtle. Bill didn't count on this. He didn't have a plan B for something like that and now he was at a crossroads: he didn't want to wake you up, you looked too gentle, but he couldn't stay there until you woke up, he would look like a stalker in the process. What should he do?

“Do you know it's rude to stare at a person while they sleep?” Bill felt his heart stop completely at the precise moment he heard that voice, since it wasn't just any voice he was listening to. That voice was yours and you seemed to sound irritated. Or so he believed until you started laughing. “Sorry if I scared you! I thought I could keep me serious, but no!”

Your eyes, which were previously placidly closed, now looked at Bill with an intensity that he couldn’t describe for the moment. They looked deep and bright at the same time or maybe it was an effect of the moonlight. You had a big smile drawn on your lips as you rose from the ground to get closer to him, holding in the process your turtle stuffed animal in one of your hands. “I think after that failure of acting I must introduce myself. Hi, my name’s ____ Aubrey and the plush that you see in my hand is Matt. And now that you know my name and of my turtle, I'd like to know yours.”

“Wi-Wi-Wi-William Den-Den-Denbrough… B-b-but all know me as-as B-B-B-Bill”, Bill replied, stuttering almost all the words but feeling inside him a great relief that at least he could tell you something without losing disastrously (a situation that happened very often at school, whether it was time to give speeches or answer questions from the teachers).

“Bill, eh? Mmmm… Yes, you have Bill's face. I like it! That name fits you as well as your cute stutter”, you said in a giggle similar to a little girl while Bill saw you shocked with his blue eyes wide open and a slight blush peeking out on his cheeks. Never before has anyone said that his stuttering was cute: yes, his friends accepted his stuttering and said it was funny to some extent, but no one had ever told him it was cute, not even Georgie. He couldn't believe what you just said and you, by looking at his expression of doubt, also noticed.

“I'm serious! I think your stuttering is pretty cute! Listen. When I used to live in Oakes, there was a new girl in my school who also stuttered. The other children bothered her a lot because of that, they said things not very pretty. Phenomenon, for example. Sometimes she went to the girls' bathroom to cry. I was sad to see her like this, to hear her say why she was born with that. While she thought her stuttering was horrible, I thought it was something beautiful. I wanted to tell her that it was a characteristic that made her unique, special, and different from the rest of her classmates... But I could never tell her all those beautiful things I thought about her stuttering. Her parents changed her school a short time later. I never saw her again... Now I moved here, I think exactly the same about you”.

Although a slight trace of sadness was reflected on your face at times, your smile never vanished from your lips while you looked at Bill and he, without realizing it, looked back at you with the same intensity. Bill noticed how his heart throbbed painfully in his chest when he heard your story, feeling identified with it. His mother used to say that his stuttering was the product of a car crash that he had when he was three years old, but he wasn't so sure about that, nor was his father. Almost all children, especially bullies, laughed and made fun of him for that. His group of friends and his younger brother were the only people who comforted him on those occasions when the desire to sob or scream was too overwhelming for him. Silly stutter, right?

As Bill grew, his way of thinking about his stuttering was changing. He no longer saw his stuttering as a defect of him or something similar, but was only a part of him. A simple quality that characterized him. But then you came, telling him now that more than a quality, his stuttering —like the girl you met before him— was a kind of virtue. An incredible and beautiful feature that made him stand out from common and current people. A magnificently different person. And just thinking about that, Bill wanted to hug you and cry in joy as he openly expressed his immense joy in meeting someone like you. A unique and special person like him. Bill finally understood your mother's words when she referred to you.

“I be-be-believe you… You’re a won-wonderful girl, ____. I-I hope we can be good f-f-f-friends”.

“And why wouldn't we be? Being friends would be an honor for me. Don't you think the same?”

“Of-of course”.

When your mother —at the end of the night— had to interrupt the conversation between the two of you to tell that Bill had to return to his house, you said goodbye to him with an affectionate hug that he didn’t expect in the beginning. From that moment on, Bill Denbrough promised himself that he would never hurt you or leave you alone if you allowed him to enter and stay in your life. He would be your first friend in Derry, he would always remember on September 15, 1986.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Curious facts of the chapter:
> 
> \+ Did you know that September 15, 1986 is the publication date of Stephen King's book: IT?
> 
> \+ Did you know that your last name in this story: Aubrey, is inspired by Jack Aubrey, a character in the Aubrey-Maturin series of novels of Patrick O'Brian?


	2. SS Georgie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Basically, the first 9 minutes and 10 seconds of the first movie... without all the logos thing, of course.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for taking your time in this new chapter. Also, thanks to the ones who read the previous one, left kudos and wrote some comments. Because without you, the author (me) is nothing; without you, this story is nothing but only words in a page.

It was October 1988, the torrential rains had reached Derry. The little George Denbrough, from his older brother's room, watched the raindrops slip through the window as he drew a happy face on it. When he finished his drawing, Georgie turned to look at Bill who was sitting on his bed with a paper in his hands. The paper was a page torn from the sketchbook that belonged to Bill and with that page making folds, one after one skillfully using his fingers, until he reached the shape of a simple but pretty paper boat.

“Sure I won’t get in trouble, Bill?” Asked Georgie.

“Don't be a wu-wu-wuss. I’d come with you if I weren’t…” Bill coughed quickly in his left fist before continuing with the sentence, “…dying”.

“You’re not dying!” Georgie exclaimed almost immediately, separating slightly from the window to better observe his brother. Georgie was aware that Bill was suffering from a not very pretty acute flu for a week, but he felt that his older brother exaggerated the situation.

Bill stared back at him in disbelief while with his right thumb he pointed to a point referring to his side: a bedside table full of used handkerchiefs, “You didn't s-s-see the vo-vo-vomit coming out of my nose this morning?”

“That’s disgusting”, he replied in disgust at just imagining that, approaching his older brother in small steps until he touched the edge of the bed where Bill finished his last touch-up on the little boat.

“Ok, go get the wax”.

“In the cellar?”

“You want to fl-fl-float, don’t you?”

“Fine…”

The idea of going to the basement wasn’t something that fascinated Georgie. The basement was his least favorite place in the house, it was a cold place by nature, dark with or without light and a little stinky thanks to the humidity. Every time Georgie had to go there, he felt the palms of his hands dampen in sweat the moment he touched the knob, his legs trembling with each step down, his heart beating extremely fast and his skin bristling intensely. It was the perfect place for some monster to come out of the darkness, pounce on him and drag him with its claws into the shadows; the worst fear of every little boy. Bill used to scold him a lot about it, saying things like: “Monsters don't exist” or “Stop being such a coward”. And Georgie was trying to take his brother's words to heart, however, it was very difficult to detach from that imagination that defined him so much. Maybe when he grew up, he would change, his body and mind would change.

For now, Georgie simply grabbed one of Bill's walkie-talkie and left the room to go down the stairs, the ground floor of the house was almost dark, except for a few lit lamps. From an alternate room, the music of a piano was heard above the sound of the rain as it fell. Georgie turned his head towards that room and saw his mother sitting in front of the piano, pressing her keys with a mastery worthy of a pianist of her category. According to his older brother, his mother had graduated from a very prestigious art school, The Juilliard School, and the music she often played inside the house was one of her Beethoven's favorite compositions, Für Elise.

Standing next to his mother, near a corner of the piano, you were listening carefully to the musical performance. It was a little over two years ago that you had moved to Witcham with your mother, a school classmate of Sharon Denbrough, and your relationship with her sons was better than ever. If you weren't with Bill, whether at school, at home or on a bike ride with the rest of his friends, then you were with Georgie, taking care of him and playing a million adventures with his plastic soldiers, his dinosaurs toys, cars, and stuffed animals in his bedroom or backyard. You were his best friend, a kind of older sister who understood and loved him. Something like Bill but with a more feminine touch. And it wasn’t at all strange to see you quite often in his house. His parents treated you like another member of the family —especially his mother who adored your musical ear— and Clarissa, your mother, preferred to leave you with them than to leave you alone in home when her work kept her on the outskirts of Derry for several days. Something that had happened today.

“____?” Georgie said, immediately catching your attention and diverting your gaze from the piano to him. An “excuse me a moment, Mrs. Denbrough” was more than enough for you to kindly leave the music room and approach him with an affectionate smile.

“Yes? You need something, Georgie?” You asked.

“Can you accompany me to the basement? Bill told me that I had to look for the wax for a paper boat he made. But I don't want to go alone down there”, Georgie asked with pleading eyes, an extremely effective strategy to convince you.

You didn't need any more explanation about it, you already knew in advance the panic Georgie had to the basement, and you, unlike Bill who scolded him, give him support to try to overcome his fear. “Yeah, why not? Wait a minute”.

You went back into the room and talked for a few seconds with his mother who was still playing the piano before leaving, grabbing Georgie's little hand while both of you went together to the basement door. When you arrived, the door itself was ajar and all you did was to give it a slight push, letting you notice how the basement was submerged in darkness. Normally, from this point, Georgie was already trembling with fear. But with you by his side, he had no reason to be afraid. One of your hands went to the switch hanging on the wall to turn on the basement, however, nothing happened. Everything was still dark. Great, the focus didn't work and the noise that Bill then caused with the communicator did nothing but shudder you and Georgie.

“Hurry up”, said Bill through the device.

As if it were an involuntary reflex, you quickly grabbed Georgie's walkie-tolkie and brought it to the level of your mouth, pressing the button to speak. “Bill you son of… your mother! You almost scared us to death!”

“____?! W-w-what are you duh-duh-doing there?”

“Obviously accompanying Georgie on his journey to the basement. Hey. Down here there is no light, so try not to scare us again”.

“I'm so-so-so-sorry, ____. I-I didn't know...”

“Don’t be so worry. I always forgive you, Bill-Billy. Over and out”, you closed the communicator's connection before he could answer you and gave it back to Georgie who was looking at you with a mischievous smile. “Don’t look at me like that. You know better than anyone how I am with your brother”.

Both of you continued down the stairs in the basement while Georgie mentioned the phrase: “I am brave, I am very brave”. The basement was completely dark. You could barely distinguish with your impoverished view some things like wooden shelves full of objects, several wires scattered around and certain tools hanging on the wall. For the rest, you saw absolutely nothing; you were really afraid, but to trip over something and fall. Or worse, make Georgie fall with you.

“Where is the wax?” You quickly asked Georgie when you forced your sight in the dark and still see almost nothing.

“There is the wax”, Georgie pointed to one of the wooden shelves, the first of all.

You approached it, glancing with your eyes and almost instantly noticed that on the second level of the shelf, near a corner, there was a small white box that said in red letters: Gulf Wax. You grabbed the box without thinking twice and turned to Georgie to let him know that you had found the wax but he had his eyes fixed on something else. You followed the direction of his eyes and, at the end of the basement, you found two white dots that glowed in the dark; the eyes of a monster. Georgie was paralyzed in terror and you, for a second, were also. _Don't be naive. Monsters only exist in stories, in movies, in cartoons…_ , your mind said as you grabbed a flashlight that you managed to see in miracle on the same shelf.

You held the flashlight firmly in your hand and turned it on by pressing its switch, pointing its light at the monster's supposed eyes. To your disappointment (or rather relief, if it was Georgie), the two white dots were nothing more than just round glass containers. The tension in Georgie's body vanished instantly although within a few seconds he was startled paranoid to hear a powerful and fierce rumble coming from outside the house.

“What was that?” He asked as he clung to your arm as a form of protection.

“A thunder, a very strong thunder”, you said. “Better let's get out of here before we see or hear something else”.

“Run, run!” Exclaimed Georgie as another thunder was echoing outside and both of you came out at full speed from the basement to go to Bill's room, where found him sitting at his desk with the paper boat in his hands, waiting for the wax you brought. Once you give it to him, and he thanked you very woefully, Bill began to spread the wax in the boat with the help of a thick brush that he had stored in a drawer of the desk. Knowing that the process could take a while, you sit in a chair beside of Bill’s and Georgie soon get on your legs to sit too as he watched quietly to Bill that ended his work. When he turned the boat to spread wax on the other side, Georgie and you could see an inscription made with black marker that said: SS Georgie.

“There you go”, said Bill with a slight smile, passing the dry paper boat to Georgie. “Sh-sh-she's all ready, captain”.

“She?” Georgie asked a little confused.

“The boats are called she, Georgie. That gives more personality to your boat. Don’t you think, Bill?” Bill simply nodded to you.

“She”, finally said Georgie, looking at you and Bill with a cheerful smile before standing of your legs and go to embrace tenderly to his older brother. “Thanks Billy”.

That moment was really beautiful for you; you had seen a wonderful scene, a sample of pure love between two brothers. So much affection, that even you wanted to join the fraternal embrace, but you didn’t. That hug looked very special to them, extremely intimate and personal. So just you stood up from the chair and you put it in place, waiting for Georgie to separate from Bill when he started tickling him and everyone in the room laughed.

Bill quickly turned his gaze to you and smiled somewhat nervously. “I-I know I ask mu-mu-much, ____. B-b-but can you play with Georgie out-out-outside? Is raining, s-s-so I can’t…”

“I understood, Bill. Play with Georgie is an honor for me, although I hope you to give me something in return for doing your homework. If you know what I mean, right?” You said mischievously, smiling and winking, to which Bill replied with a small jolt and his cheeks flushed. Georgie looked funny at Bill reaction and you couldn’t help but laugh a little before continuing your speech in satisfaction. “I don't know why you get that way, Bill-Billy. You know I'm just kidding, right?”

“Yes-s-s-s-s-s”, he replied forcefully, trying to dispel the images that had arisen in his head, because of your suggestive joke.

“That’s good”, your mischievous smile still didn't disappear. “Let's go, Georgie, It’s getting late. Before I kill your brother with another of my pretty jokes”.

Georgie giggled and followed you by jumping happily as he left Bill's room, but not before saying goodbye to his brother: “See you later, Billy! Bye”. A few minutes later, Georgie and you were both ready to go out in the rain. While Georgie was wearing a yellow raincoat vest with a hood and green rubber boots, you, on the other hand, simply carried a translucent umbrella. With the paper boat in his left hand, the little Denbrough turned to his house for the last time and waved his right arm as a farewell to his older brother who was watching him from the large window of his room.

“Be careful. Don’t separate from ____”, Bill reminded him through the communicator and he responded with a sound of approval and then went to where you were, on the sidewalk.

“We're ready to sail, captain”, you said in a tone very similar to a sailor and Georgie smiled at your performance, putting the little boat on the sidewalk so it could navigate the water that flowed there.

The SS Georgie swayed from side to side through the stream of water and its owner continued its journey, splashing along the street and laughing amusedly when he felt the raindrops soaking his face and part of his brown hair protruding from the hood. You were not far behind either; your walk was relatively fast, not losing sight of the younger from the Denbrough brothers, who continued crossing the paper boat without realizing that he was approaching orange fences that said: Derry Public Works Department. Torrential rains had wreaked havoc on many streets of Derry, including Witcham, so it wasn’t uncommon to see fences and building materials out there.

“Fences ahead, captain!” You informed Georgie just like a soldier does with his superior in command and he reacted to your warning. The little Denbrough went under the first fence but, for some very strange reason, he couldn't dodge the second one, crashing into it and falling sitting on the wet asphalt of the street. “Are you alright, Georgie?!”

“Yes! I just bumped a little on my forehead!” Georgie exclaimed to your exalted concern as he, in effect, lightly rubbed where he had been hit. It didn't take you long to get to his side to help him get up and take the opportunity to give him a short kiss on his forehead as a magical method of healing. “Thanks for worrying about your captain. You are my favorite sailor”.

You laughed at his nice comment and he did it too before putting his brown eyes on his paper ship that, for reasons of destiny, had been stranded next to the pile of construction materials. That was between those orange fences and sheltered under a green waterproof tarp. _It looks like the shell of a giant tortoise... Where have I seen a turtle like this before?_ Georgie thought for a few seconds and then completely forgot it when his little boat resumed its journey by taking another water path.

“Come on, ____! The journey continues!” He said, running after his paper boat and you following him almost instantly.

The SS Georgie continued its navigation along Witcham Street until it reached the intersection of this one with Jackson Street, where a small stone caused the paper boat to turn on itself and fall by accident into an open sewer. Georgie, seeing this, could not help shouting a no in frustration and knelt in front of the dark sewer to try to find his boat. “Bill’s gonna kill me”.

“Indeed. He’s gonna kill you today", you said jokingly but when you noticed Georgie's sad expression, your grip on the umbrella faltered a little and you had no choice but to apologize with a guilty sigh. “I'm sorry, Georgie, I didn't mean it. I really doubt that Bill gets angry because you lost her, he can make you another one if you want. Believe me, even I can ask him to create another SS Georgie but version 2.0. What do you think about that?”

“Would you do that for me?”

“Why would I lie to you? Of course I would do it for you, you are my best friend in the whole world. Apart from Bill, of course”.

Georgie let out a light cheerful laugh. “But I'm your super mega best friend”.

“I will not deny that”, you rolled your eyes comically and laughed a little before continuing with the original theme. “So what do you say, captain? Do we ask sailor Billy to build a new SS Georgie?

“Yes!” He nodded vigorously.

“Then so be it, my captain. I will immediately give your orders to sailor Billy to start his work as soon as possible. I'll be right back, I won't be long”, you said before turning in direction to Witcham and running back in the rain to the Denbrough family house.

Once you disappeared inside the house, Georgie returned his eyes to the open sewer to see if he could find his paper ship. Yes, you had already made it clear that Bill would build another one without any problem, but it cost him nothing to keep looking for his missing boat. So he did it and, within a few seconds, he discovered something. But it wasn't the SS Georgie, of course not. What Georgie found was a pair of bright golden eyes watching him from the darkness of the sewer, making him back off because of the frightened impression he felt.

“Hiya, Georgie”, he was greeted by a clown who suddenly peeked into the sewer. Almost his entire face was painted white, except for the surroundings of his mouth and nose that were red. His hair was not noticeable in the perpetual darkness of the sewer and the little he looked of his suit, is that it was pompous on his neck. But what most intrigued Georgie were his eyes, his eyes were blue (like Bill’s and his mother), not gold. Although he could swear that the eyes of that clown were golden at first. Did he imagine it?

“What a nice boat”, said the smiling clown, raising his left hand and exposing Georgie’s paper boat. “Do you want it back?”

“Yes, please...” Georgie answered doubtfully.

“You look like a nice boy. I bet you have a lot of friends”, the clown insinuated, as if was the most obvious thing in the world.

“Three. But my brother and ____ are my best friends”, Georgie explained.

“Where are they?” Asked the clown, smiling in interest.

“Bill is sick at home”, said Georgie. “And ____ went to see him for a moment. Right now she comes back”.

“I bet I could cheer him up with your friend's help. I'll give them a balloon”, the clown confessed as he stared at him. “Do you want a balloon too, Georgie?”

“I'm not supposed to take stuff from strangers”, Georgie said immediately.

“Oh well. I'm Pennywise, the dancing clown!” Cried in exaltation Pennywise, shivering his white pompous suit so the bell that he carried with him would sound. “Pennywise meet Georgie. Georgie meet Pennywise. Now we are not strangers, are we?”

Georgie looked at him with some doubt; talking with that clown gave him a strange feeling in his chest, a rare combination of trust and fear. He had never felt this way before and you weren't there to help him solve his dilemma. Why were you taking so long? He no longer wanted to keep up with the clown but he had no choice, he would be stuck in that situation until you came to his rescue. "What are you doing in the sewer?"

“A storm blew me away. Blew the whole circus away!” Pennywise explained in an exaggerated and amused tone. “Can you smell the circus, Georgie? There are peanuts, cotton candy... Hot dogs... annnnnnd…”

“Popcorn?” Asked Georgie, completing the clown's sentence.

“Popcorn! Is that your favorite?”

“Uh huh”.

“Mine too! Because they pop!” Pennywise said excitedly as he made the typical popcorn sound with his mouth. “Pop! Pop! Pop!”

This caused Georgie to let out an innocent giggle and, like every little boy would do, he began to imitate the sound made by the clown. “Pop!”

The moment was funny; while Pennywise made funny sounds of popcorn exploding, Georgie laughed amusedly at him. But just as this moment of amusement arose, within a few seconds it vanished when the clown's smile vanished from his red-painted lips and his bluish eyes fixed in the little Denbrough, which returned his uncomfortable look and with a growing fear in his heart. Georgie felt like a voice inside him repeated that he shouldn't stay there any longer, no matter if the clown was a stranger or not, he had to get away as soon as possible from that sewer. Your remarkable absence was also resonating in his mind, it had been too long since you went to see Bill: Something had happened to his brother? Had his flu got worse? Or were you the one who needed help? So many questions with few answers...

“I should get going now”, said Georgie suddenly wanting to say goodbye to the strange clown, running to his house and checking if everything was going well with his brother and you.

“Without your boat?” Asked Pennywise instantly. “You don't want to lose it Georgie. Bill's gonna kill you”, the clown was raising the paper ship in front of the sight of the little Denbrough as he shook it from side to side with a tempting smile. “Here. Take it. Take it, Georgie”.

It would be a complete lie to say that George Denbrough didn't think twice before deciding it was worth it or not to have SS Georgie back in his hands. If perhaps he had deciphered the true intentions of that mysterious clown who entered in the darkness of the sewer, or if he had only noticed the change from a light blue to a bright gold in the eyes of that clown, his destiny could have been different However, he didn’t realize his mistake until it was too late; his right arm was fully extended to try to grab the boat that was out of his reach and Pennywise took the opportunity to attack just like a predator.

Pennywise pulled Georgie's arm and, as if it were a snake, opened his mouth completely, unhooking it and showing a million sharp fangs that dug into his victim's arm. Georgie howled in terrible agony at the feel of the clown tearing practically all his arm out of a single bite. His blood gushing out in hemorrhagic jets without any control and mixing freely with the rainwater on the pavement of the street. The little Denbrough fell on his back on the wet street and, for a few valuable seconds, lost consciousness before the adrenaline exploded in him and made him wake up. The adrenaline he experienced was greater than his pain, the adrenaline encouraged him to do something, encouraged him to fight or flee. Georgie didn't have enough strength to fight, his little body wouldn't allow it, but at least he did have the option to run away. He with much effort turned to himself and tried to escape from there, even if he was crawling. He thought he would make it, that he would really get rid of that situation. Unfortunately, Georgie felt the clown's gloved hand cling to his right ankle and pull him back.

“Georgie! GEORGIE!”

The last thing Georgie heard before disappearing was your cries of despair and the clown's laugh echoing in the darkness of the cold sewer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More like a filler, this chapter is only the aperitif for the next one. And why I say this? Because the third chapter is freaking long and have some things that, perhaps, are going to be interesting to you. Yeah, little things like: easter eggs from the book, a good taste of angst, more blood than necessary, tears here and there, among other things... The author regrets nothing~ See ya next time!


	3. There's Something Out There

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. It doesn't matter if you did or didn't do something, if you acted or stayed quiet. At the end of the day, you have to face the consecuences of your own desicions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had to admit, that I had so much fun writting this chapter (I can still remember my evil smile while doing it XD). One of my guilty pleasures is the angst, so I enjoy more than neccesary when I write (and read too) some angst, putting that touch of innecesary suffering to one or more characters. Ah, my dark heart looking for more of that in the near future of this story... Whatever, I hope you like this angsty chapter~ 
> 
> And, like always, thank you for being here, reading another chapter. The author loves you for that <3

Bill had a bad feeling. The last time he knew something about you was when you had returned to his house to ask him if he could make another boat (since Georgie dropped the first one into the sewer, according to what you told him). He nodded willing to comply with your request before you went out to meet his younger brother. Bill thought you would just go find Georgie and both of you would come home soon, maybe you would take some time because Georgie would surely want to play with you a little more in the rain. But neither of you returned, neither his brother nor you. Panic was taking over Bill with every second that passed; he grabbed the communicator in his hand and began to speak in it with an uneasy air.

“Ge-Georgie, can you copy me? I-I need you to an-answer me. Ge-Georgie? Georgie, can you hear me?” But on the other side nothing was heard, not even static. “Damn it! W-w-why did he tu-tu-turn it off?”

That was the first thing Bill thought. Georgie had turned off his walkie-talkie on purpose: maybe so the battery wouldn't run out, maybe because the transmission signal wasn't good thanks to the rain, or maybe because you were with him to take care and he didn't need his older brother. There were multiple reasons to turn it off. However, Bill dismissed that idea instantly. Georgie just wasn't like that. No matter how low the battery was or the bad weather was doing his thing, he would never turn off his communicator under any circumstances. Much less if he was with you playing outside the house. “Keep it always on, Georgie, so your brother makes sure you're okay, that we're both okay”, was a tip you once gave to Bill's little brother when you accompanied him to play with other children in the neighborhood and he —since then— never forgot it.

“This is b-b-bad… S-s-so bad…” Bill muttered to himself as he tried to make any connection with his younger brother's communicator in vain. He begged between coughs that his growing panic was only a bad trick of the hypothetical scenarios that ran through his worried mind. “B-b-but they are well... They mu-mu-must be... They have on-only delayed a b-b-bit... Yes, it mu-mu-must be that... There is no need to whu-whu-worry...”

A voice that echoed in his head told him otherwise. Bill felt he had heard that voice before, though he couldn't remember when or where. That voice seemed his conscience: good, kind and gentle. “There's something out there, son”, the voice said softly, “you should go out to find out what is happening”. And as it emerged, within a few seconds it vanished into the depths of his mind. “You should go out”, his subconscious continued to echo that phrase in his brain as in a sort of order. Then Bill got up shot from the chair, abruptly moving away from his desk and leaving his room in less than a minute. He almost jumped down the steps of the main staircase. Arriving at the front door, Bill turned the knob and jumped into the street without a doubt. It was still raining (it wasn't strong enough to get him completely soaked, but to feel some of that wet cold on his skin) and Bill didn't even wear a cap to cover himself with the raindrops. Surely his carelessness would be reflected in a worse flu. However, that didn't matter to Bill. You and Georgie were more important than his health at the time.

Bill spotted a tumult of people near the intersection of Witcham with Jackson Street and he accelerated his step in their direction. Most of the people who were there were neighbors that Bill didn’t know personally, but that he used to see and greet occasionally when they came across the street. As he approached the adults, Bill noticed that their faces were pale and nervous whispers were heard between them. Bill felt a bad vibe when he saw them like that, a very bad one. Something terrible had happened. They seemed extremely scared and shocked in front of whatever they were seeing. Bill gradually made his way among adults to get to the origin of the issue that had them worried. Some of them turned to look at him with some sadness while others simply ignored him and kept their eyes fixed on what they had ahead. One or another neighbor tried to stop his advance in the group. “Better go home, kid. You shouldn't see this”, told one of them to him but Bill decided to ignore the advice and continue.

When he reached the center of the group, Bill felt his heart squeeze painfully in his chest and tears sprang from his eyes because of the awful scene before him. There, sitting squatting on the asphalt soaked in rain and blood alike, was Dave Gardener. The man —a worker of Shoeboat— had a deadly pale face, each faction of his face contracted in a grimace of anguish and despair. His eyes were wide in terror and completely open as was his mouth that seemed to scream words without sound. In his arms was a flabby, bleeding and dying person. That person was you. His hands moved frantically along your relaxed but inexpressive and ghostly face; your eyes closed, your cheeks and lips colorless. From your head, on your scalp, several threads of blood arose that ran along both sides of your face and part of your neck. Your blood dripped between the trembling fingers of the man, staining your clothes, staining his, and on the pavement of the street. A reddish water formed that flowed into the sewer.

Bill was stunned. He felt that he had a huge lump tied to his throat that prevented him from speaking or shouting. He wanted to do something to help you, to try to wake you up. But his body didn’t move, his arms and legs were motionless, his entire being frozen in horror at what he was seeing. The people around him were roughly the same as him. No one reacted, nobody was doing anything. Except one. Dave Gardener was the only one who moved and tried to do something to save your life. His hands cradled your head and pressed hard to stop the bleeding as much as possible. The closest to an impromptu emergency turnstile. However, Bill knew that he couldn’t be doing that forever. At some point, he would run out of energy enough to keep up the pressure and you would die from the inevitable loss of blood.

 _This is my fault. This is all my fault_ , Bill said to himself. Grief and guilt flooded his soul completely; tears clouded his sight. _I should have accompanied them. I wasn’t so sick. Thanks to me, ____ is injured, dying because of me. And Georgie is..._

Another thing that Bill didn’t go unnoticed was the mysterious absence of his brother on the scene. At no time, Georgie made an appearance in the place and those who were there didn’t mention him either. Bill, fearing the worst, understood that your bloody state was somehow related to Georgie's disappearance. It was not difficult to deduce.

The siren of a patrol car rang from the distance and everyone seemed suddenly to wake up from some kind of trance, including Bill. The alternation of red and blue light illuminated several houses on its way to them; more than one adult sighed in some relief or unease when they saw the police car approaching. When it arrived at its destination, the policeman who was driving —leaving the engine running— got out of it without wasting time. Bill recognized him instantly. The gray-haired cop was the Officer Alosyus Nell; his strong Irish accent could be noticed perfectly when he spoke.

“Clear the place, ladies and gentlemen, this is an emergency situation”, said Officer Nell as he walked hurriedly through the crowd. His serious eyes examined the surroundings around him for a few seconds, then he turned his attention to you and the neighbor who held you in his arms. “What is your name, gentleman?”

“Dave Gardener, sir”.

“Master Gardener, I need you to come with me to the patrol. A person called 911 but the ambulance to help this lady had a mishap on the road. And I fear that if we wait for another to come, it may already be too late”, he explained. “I will take the girl to the hospital. So I need your help so she doesn't keep losing more blood along the way”.

Both men started immediately. Dave Gardener jumped up and went quickly to the car where Officer Nell already had the back door open for him to enter with you. Once with both inside, the officer closed it and went to his driver's seat. For a brief moment, from the windshield the Officer Nell's gaze intertwined with Bill's. The officer could almost experience that whirlwind of intense emotions that were reflected in the boy's eyes. _I'm sorry, Master Bill Denbrough. I know she is your friend and it tears your soul to see her like this. That's why I'm here, I don't want to see her dead either_ , said Officer Nell mentally before fixing his eyes on the steering wheel. He put the patrol in reverse, making a quick turn and driving down the street where he had come from. The siren was heard loudly and the lights shone brightly until the patrol disappeared from sight.

Now with nothing to see, the conglomerate of people dissolved. Each of them returned to their homes, returned to normal. As if nothing had happened. Bill, on the other hand, still felt disturbed and scared. He didn't want to go home, he didn't want to tell his parents what happened, he didn't want to see his mother break into tears and his father lock himself in the garage. However, he had to do it. And when he did, his parents' world collapsed completely. The most affected was Sharon Denbrough; an attack of anxiety and hysteria sent her directly to the emergency room where they had to sedate her. She refused to accept the cruel reality that was presented to her: her beloved Georgie had disappeared and you, her best friend's daughter, were in the intensive care unit (ICU) of the Derry Municipal Hospital. Everything had happened under her care (or rather, Bill's, if more attention was paid to the situation). Her husband, Zack Denbrough, stood by her side with a comforting hand on her left shoulder. He was also suffering; the truth of the facts went through him like a sharp spear. At the corner of his eyes, some tears appeared, but he wouldn't let them run. He would try to be strong for her, he must be.

Bill, from the waiting room, kept sobbing silently in the chair. The guilt he felt from the morning was only increasing, eating his insides until he was hollow. Totally empty. He was the only one to blame for everything that was going on: Georgie's disappearance, your possible death, the anguish of his parents and the desolation on your mother's face. Bill didn't dare to see her in the eyes, he didn't have enough courage to do it. Clarissa Aubrey's eyes had lost their special glow, they had become dull and gloomy the instant she heard the doctor talking about your delicate state. “She lost a lot of blood. The trauma on her head is quite severe, so there is a great chance of permanent brain damage. In the worst case, brain death can occur. The first 24 hours are crucial”. If Bill had been told the same thing, he would also have fallen apart.

“You should stop crying, Denbrough. And isn’t because I think crying is for fags”, said a male voice with a remarkable Argentine accent. “We all have the right to cry. But it’s at these times, when we must demonstrate strength. Or at least try. For the sake of others and ourselves too”.

With tears sliding down his cheeks, Bill lifted his head and turned his gaze to the man sitting next to him in that waiting room. The man, with brown hair and a circular beard, also showed some sadness in his light eyes but nothing more. There was no drop of crying on his face. His arms were crossed at his chest height and his back was lying on the back of the seat. Your stepfather in all his splendor. Sometimes angry and difficult to understand in some things —according to your perspective— but he was still a wonderful stepfather. He was the only father figure you knew since you had reason and Bill respected that.

Bill opened his mouth to say something, but couldn’t. He closed it again and clenched his lips in a tense line. The lump in his throat prevented him from speaking, and even if he had sought a way to say a word —something he doubted— his stuttering would make it worse. Tears still went out of control of his eyes. Bill used the back of his right hand to stop them even though appeared more. Your stepfather looked at him sideways until, after a while, he let out a resigned sigh and began to pat him on the back. A gesture of comfort. _Maybe I'm pushing hard. He's just a boy, Andy. A 12 year old boy who shouldn't be going through this._

“Breath, boy. Nor is it for you to try too hard”, a slight smile of understanding formed on his lips, “I just want you to understand that crying in these situations is completely normal but don't let that dominate you. When sadness consumes you, you fall into an abyss of bad thoughts. Thoughts that do you no good and neither do others. Do you understand what I am trying to tell you?”

Bill nodded.

“Alright. ____ wouldn’t like to see you sad and depressed, so be brave for her. Have faith that she will get better, that she will survive this. Have faith that every problem has a solution, no matter how impossible the problem is. Never lose faith, Denbrough. Because if you lose faith, you lose hope. And when you lose hope, you lose everything”.

After that, neither of them spoke again in a good while. Bill silently pondered your stepfather's wise words until the sound of approaching steps took him out of his own mind. Your stepfather looked up from the magazine he had in his hands for several minutes to see the woman who was now facing them. It was your mother. Her face was still as distressed by the pain she felt when she saw you were bedridden in a bed almost lifeless and with multiple machines connected to you. Her eyes were flushed from so much crying and her lips trembled incessantly; Bill was also sad to see her like that. Your stepfather quickly got up from the seat —throwing the boring magazine on the floor— and wrapped your mother in a well-deserved hug that she reciprocated. One and another kiss he put on both her cheeks while talking to her in a low voice about certain issues and news that Bill didn’t want to listen. Bill, he wasn’t interested in meddling, he didn't want to receive bad news.

And so they continued, conversing only in each other's ears, until them both separated and your stepfather walked towards the nearest corridor. Bill sensed that in the ICU only one visit was allowed at a time and your mother had been the first, so now it was your stepfather's turn to go to see you. That left Bill with your mother in the waiting room and he felt scared and uncomfortable about it. Bill was afraid that Clarissa Aubrey would point to him in accuse, shouting and recriminating him for neglecting you, blaming him for practically killing you in his negligence and calling the police to arrest him, that he would be locked up in jail with the image of your death engraved on his conscience for the rest of his life. It was an exaggeration what Bill was imagining, but there was some truth in those fateful scenarios: every action has a consequence. His mistake was not to accompany you and now you were paying the price of that error. Georgie too. If some kind of punishment or torture was necessary to alleviate the suffering in the hearts of his parents, your mother and your stepfather, then he should gladly accept it, right?

Pleasant was his surprise to feel your mother's hands in his. Bill looked confused; she simply shook her head and gave him a sad smile before pulling him, prompting him to get up from the hospital's plastic chair. He stood up from the chair and Clarissa took advantage of the moment to give her a short hug (maybe out of necessity, maybe unconsciously, maybe not) and then said, “It's been too late, Bill. Go home. Your mother has already been taken care and she have been discharged, she is with your father in the car. Possibly they are waiting for you, go with them”.

“B-b-but I can’t go! I sh-sh-should know how is ____! Is my f-f-f-fault that sh-sh-she is…!”

Clarissa interrupted him so he wouldn't finish that sentence, touching his cheeks and focusing his eyes on her. It really broke her soul to see how Bill's tired and irritated eyes flooded in tears of guilt. “Listen to me, Bill. What happened today, the disappearance of your brother and the ... accident of my daughter, is not your fault. I don't know what your parents would think about it but I don't blame you for this, I could never do it. You were sick, you couldn't go out and play with them. I understand that, my daughter understood, your brother too”.

“Even so, I sh-sh-should have insisted on leaving... If-if I had gone with them, I could have tried to de-de-defend them...” he replied.

“I know you would have done it without hesitation, you love your brother and your friends with all your heart, that you would do anything for them. But I don't want you to keep blaming yourself for what you could have done or not. There was no way you knew something like this was going to happen, you're not a fortune teller who predicts the future. No one can point you guilty, nor your parents. The real culprit of all this is the person or people who did this, not you. Do you understand that, Bill?”

“Yes, Mrs. Au-Aubrey…”

“Then you know, Bill. Don't blame yourself for something that simply isn't your fault”, she said with a slight smile drawn on her lips. Although the rest of her face showed tiredness and sadness, that little smile seemed to revitalize her a little.

Bill also wanted to smile back until he remembered something else. “And what about ____? W-w-what happens if sh-sh-she wakes up and doesn't s-s-see anyone? Sh-sh-she whu-whu-would be so s-s-scared! I could s-s-stay to take care of her too, Mrs. Au-Aubrey! We could do it in sh-sh-sh-shifts!”

“Don't worry about that, Andy is going to stay in the hospital to help me. Although I also appreciate your generous offer, Bill. You are a gentleman”, her small smile widened a few millimeters, while using one of her hands to slightly ruffle his hair. Bill also smiled. “A gentleman who must return home to rest. Tomorrow will be a new day”.

With a hand shake, Bill said goodbye to Clarissa Aubrey and went to the hospital parking lot where, indeed, his parents were in the car waiting for him. The return trip home was uncomfortably silent; Bill, from the backseat, felt as if an invisible wall separated him from his parents who were in the front seats. Neither of them would flinch at looking at him, not even to take a look and say at least hello or how he was. His father had his eyes fixed on the road and his mother was bowed, looking at nothing. Bill, on several occasions, opened his mouth to say something, anything. Unfortunately, within a few seconds he would close it again; he gave up. It wasn’t worth trying. Father, mother and son remained in a sepulchral silence all the way until they reached the house of the Denbrough family.

When everyone got out of the car and his father opened the door of the house, Bill was the first to enter. At full speed, Bill climbed the stairs and locked himself in his room, throwing himself on his bed and burying his face in the pillow. The urge to cry wasn’t lacking in those moments but he felt dry, he had been crying almost all day. His exhausted eyes, like the rest of the body, could no longer do anything for him. Occasionally, Bill lifted his head from the pillow and looked toward the door; footsteps were heard in the hallway and there was a light on. Bill really wanted his father, mother or both to approach his room, to knock on the door and then enter, to sit next to him in his bed and ask him if he was okay or told him that they were worried about him. Nothing he wanted happened; the light went out and the steps stopped being heard. They never approached him, they didn't even look out to make sure he was still there, alive and not missing. That deeply hurt Bill, who slept through nightmares in what was left of the night.

The following days and weeks wouldn’t be good either; George Denbrough was still missing, your health condition wasn’t improving and Bill felt more desolate than ever. His parents seemed to ignore him on purpose and Bill also felt that he had even been abandoned, not literally but in the sense that they were no longer the loving parents he knew. More than his parents, they were like strangers living with him. For Bill, what was once a home full of warm love and happiness, was now become a dreary place and cold indifference. The only consolation Bill had left was to see his friends every day at school: Stanley Uris, Edward Kapsbrak and Richard Tozier. Together with them, Bill was part of a group called The Losers Club. Stan the Man as the neat Jewish child, Eddie as the asthmatic obsessed with germ-free things, Richie or Trashmouth as the boy with glasses who could never shut up his mouth in front of the bullies, and Big Bill being the group's natural leader.

Thanks to them, the evening visits to the hospital were no longer as painful and pitiful for Bill. Not like the first times. Among the four they managed to keep your mother from feeling so lonely and sad while waiting for news from you, of some improvement in your health. Stan, being mentally more mature than the rest of his friends for the situation, was in charge of chatting with Clarissa Aubrey. Talking about anything that occurred to him to positively distract your mother's mind. Then Bill followed; his gestures of support and affection went hand in hand with Stan's words, he let his body language speak for him. Then there were Richie and Eddie. Richie letting go odd jokes or comments on the air to see if any of them laughed and Eddie almost immediately reprimanded him with a “beep beep, Richie”.

“But it’s true! My dad read it on the front page of the Derry News this morning. The title read: Possible Psycho in Derry. Can you believe it, Eds? A psycho kidnapping children! And guess what... We are children!” Richie exclaimed, pretending to be scared.

“Do you want to shut up, Richie?! I already told you not to tell me Eds!” Eddie replied. “Also, we are in a hospital. You shouldn't be saying those things here”.

Richie stifled a thunderous laugh that almost echoed in the room. “I don't see the problem. There are no more children than us. The psychopath only kidnaps children, not old and sick adults on hospital beds. And I doubt that ____ counts as a goal because she is-”

“Beep beep, Richie!” Eddie and Stan said in unison.

Bill, in contrast, said nothing but the expression on his face was more than enough to silence Richie. His face contracted in a grimace of anger mixed with discomfort. Bill really disliked hearing about that supposed psycho who kidnapped children and killed them. Lately, some children from several points in Derry had begun to disappear, just like Georgie did. The authorities initially thought that these children simply ran away from home or something similar. However, things changed when the mutilated body of one of those missing children was found on the banks of the Kenduskeag. Then, Richard Borton, the Chief of the Derry’s Police, issued the warning of a dangerous criminal prowling in the city. Commissioner Borton imposed a new curfew at 7:00 p.m. to try to avoid the disappearance of another child, of another Georgie.

However, Bill sensed within himself that absurd curfew wouldn’t stop this damn psychopath, pedophile or whatever. Nothing stopped him from taking his brother and attacking you on that rainy October afternoon. Yes, Bill suspected it. That fateful day someone was watching you and Georgie as both of you played in the rain. That someone took advantage of the moment when you returned to Bill's house and Georgie was alone, tricked his brother into falling into his trap. The moment you left the house, then it was that you saw that someone, what he was doing, and that someone saw you too. Maybe you tried to fight, maybe you tried to defend yourself, and maybe you tried to do anything in your power to save Georgie. But in the end, you couldn't do anything against that someone, you were alone. And that someone had no mercy with you, didn’t want to see you alive. If it hadn't been for the help of Dave Gardener and the appearance of Officer Nell, you really would have died that horrible day...

“Hey Bill, are you alright? Bill? Bill?” Stan asked when he saw how his friend didn’t respond to the touches on his shoulder; his eyes were empty on the floor, Bill's eyes were unfocused and that really scared Stan. He had never seen him like this before. The other two also realized this and began to see their friend with growing concern.

“Earth calling Bill, Earth calling Bill. Bill, do you hear me?” Richie said, snapping his fingers near Bill but he still didn't react. Bill seemed completely absorbed in his own thoughts, “Houston, we have a problem: Bill doesn’t respond. What the hell did you do to him, Stan?”

“Don't talk nonsense, Richie. I haven’t done anything”, he replied quickly. “But I don't know what's happening to him, a few minutes ago he was fine or I think so. What do you think, Eddie?”

“I don’t know. It's the first time I see Big Bill like that”, confessed Eddie with an air of unease when he noticed the lost look in his best friend's eyes. “Big Bill? It's me, Eddie. You're good? Tell us something, anything”.

For a few seconds that seemed eternal, Bill remained unanswered and the panic among his friends was only increasing. Your mother had gone several minutes ago to talk to the doctor who was taking care of you and still didn’t come back, leaving the children alone in the waiting room. None of them knew exactly what to do to help their best friend, or so it was until Stan was about to call a nurse. And he would have done it, if it wasn't because Bill Denbrough himself suddenly jumped from the seat, also startling his friends. As if an electric current had traveled at speed through the body of each one of them and forced them to rise. Bill's blue eyes, which were formerly wild in nowhere, were now completely open, watchful in a frantic movement to recognize his surroundings. For a moment, he forgot that he was in the hospital with his friends. They looked at each other and Bill with confusion, surprise and some fear of not understanding what was happening.

Bill opened his mouth to say something to his friends, possibly an apology for his strange behavior. But everyone was more confused and shocked, including Bill, when he said the following without stuttering: “The Turtle couldn't help her”.

Almost at the same time that Bill said that, an alarm or beep began to resonate throughout the hall. The noise was incessant, strident and penetrating; the nurses at the reception stopped gossiping on the phones and the doctors who were walking around stopped. The boys watched in print how everything and everyone remained static in their positions, listening to the loud noise. Motionless, paralyzed; this was the case for long seconds until another sound also echoed on the white walls of the hospital. The exalted screams of Clarissa Aubrey from the ICU. “She is awake! My daughter is awake! But she can't breathe! The tube in her mouth is choking her! Help! Somebody help her, please! Please”. And then, the movement returned to the hospital staff again. The nurses spoke quickly on their phones before hanging up the calls and keeping calm in the room, one of them with your mother. Doctors walking hurriedly to the ICU and entering a specific room.

Bill could no longer contain the tension in his heart. He had to see you, one way or another, he had to do it to assure himself that this was really happening. That you were really alive, that you were waking up and that your mother's screams were no invention of his imagination. Bill looked at his friends silently, his gaze expressing everything his stuttering voice couldn't say, and they got the message. Stan, Richie and Eddie got down to work right away. Like a human shield, among the three they managed to hide Bill from the sight of nurses and other adults while he slipped away to the ICU area. The mission was a success. Soon, Bill was already inside and was searching with some despair among the listed doors of the place until he found an open one. Door 308. He wasn’t prepared for what he saw behind that open door.

There you were all pale, dressed in a blue hospital gown, lying on a stretcher and surrounded by a group of doctors who examined you, talked to you, and even touched you. One of them, called Russ Handor, was pulling something from your mouth and Bill realized, with growing horror, that it was the tube your mother had mentioned. The tube was made of transparent plastic and looked extremely long, measuring more than a meter for Bill. Your semi-open eyes, with well-marked dark circles underneath, were tearing at the sensation of that thing brushing your throat, causing reflections as if you were going to vomit. Choking sounds. A second doctor kept your head in position during the process while another checked your bandages, making sure there was no blood around your skull. The deafening noise of the machines connected to you didn’t stop; your breathing was fast and irregular. Your arms and legs seemed to want to move but they didn't have the strength to do it, you couldn't even move your fingers.

Bill had to grab the door frame so he wouldn't collapse against the floor. His eyes were gathering with tears, although he didn't even know if those tears were of happiness, of relief, or of anguish. You were alive, that was true. But you were also there, bedridden almost paralyzed and surrounded by a lot of unknown people who were just trying to help you. You were very scared, completely terrified; Bill could feel your panic. People's cold gloved hands made you shiver involuntarily, with intense chills running along your back and neck. The continuous beeps of the environment beat you in the ears and the bright ceiling light dazzled you. You were confused, you were upset, and you didn't know where the hell you were. Were you in hell?

When the tube finished coming out of your mouth and the unknown hands stopped holding you, you instinctively turned your head to the side to vomit on the floor. Your stomach was empty, you had no food to discard. So the only thing that fell on the white tiles was saliva, spurts of saliva. You stayed that way for a minute or two, staring at the floor and spitting saliva until the discomfort in the back of your throat gradually faded. Your breathing was also normalizing just like the rest of your senses; the shrill noise around was slowly dying in the background. A strange but nothing painful tingling beneath the skin gave you back the sensation to the hands and feet, the sensation of being able to move them. Your body was calming, the worst was over, and disorientation was the only thing that took time to dissipate from your mind full of questions.

 _The people around me are doctors. Yes, they are certainly doctors. But what I’m doing in the hospital? Why I am here?_ You told to yourself _. I was playing with Georgie until he lost the boat in the sewer. Then I went to Bill's house to do another one and returned with Georgie. And then... then... What happened? What happened next? Why can't I remember it? For God's sake, why I can't remember anything? What is happening to me?_

You looked up from the floor and your eyes were intertwined with the blue eyes of the boy who was leaning on the door frame. For a few seconds, you didn't know who that child was. Your brain was still confused, sleepy and throbbing like a heart. Your head ached from just thinking until something clicked on it. There was only one person you knew who had that gentle blue look and that auburn hair. That boy was Bill, Bill Denbrough. You felt like a fool for forgetting him for a moment. How could you forget someone like Bill, someone so special? But why was him there? Why didn't he approach you? Was he afraid of you? Did you do something to him?

“Bill?”

Bill, who had been holding his breath since you saw him, finally felt that he could breathe again calmly. He smiles at you; you recognized him, you really recognized him. For a moment, Bill had felt a lot of fear and anxiety. He thought that maybe you were delirious or suffering from an attack of amnesia (he knew that far below those bandages was your wound, and that that type of head injury could have serious consequences), and that you had forgotten him, your best friend. That idea completely frightened him. But soon he knew that you were fine —or so it seemed— you had called him by his name and that made him feel very happy. So much was his joy and happiness, that without thinking twice he separate himself from the door frame and entered the room. He wanted to hug you, he wanted to kiss you on the forehead and tell you in tears how much he had missed you. How much everyone had missed you.

The doctors there were watching the scene unfolding incredulously. More than one was willing to stop Bill's walk and ask who had let him in or tell him he shouldn't be there. Others intervened in favor of the boy, such as Dr. Russ Handor, commenting that there was no danger that the boy would approach you. On the contrary, the simple fact that Bill was there and you reacted to him naturally was a good thing. So most of them agreed to the boy to stay for your benefit.

And so it was, when Bill came to your side, almost all the doctors left the place with the exception of the aforementioned Dr. Handor and another. Both doctors stayed to continue monitoring your vital signs while you interacted with Bill Denbrough. Bill placed his right hand on your forearm, gently stroking it and, with that, he assured himself that you were real. You were really there with him, you were smiling at him and he at you although with tears contained in his eyes. Happiness tears. “Hello, ____. Yuh-you have no idea how happy I am to s-s-s-see you. How duh-do you f-f-f-f-feel?”

“My head hurts a little but nothing serious. Do not worry. Besides, I'm glad to see you too, Bill. I feel that I have slept for an eternity”, you said with a laugh that quickly turned into a dry cough for a few seconds. Bill looked alarmed at you until you shook your head and smiled apologetically. “Calm down, Bill, it's just a cough. I think it was a bad idea to laugh with a dry throat, so I'll write it down in my notebook of things I shouldn't do. But first of all, I need to ask you something. It is of the utmost importance”.

“Of-of course! Yuh-you can ask me any-any-anything you want, ____! That's what I'm here f-f-f-f-for, no?” He answered.

"Have I told you that you're a love, Bill-Billy?" Bill turned red from his nerves when he heard your question and you giggled before continuing. “Oops. Sorry, that wasn’t the question I originally wanted to ask you. But now, seriously. Do you know why I am in the hospital?”

“W-w-what? Yuh-you don’t remember? You went out looking f-f-f-for Georgie to return to the house f-f-for his new boat be-be-because the other he lost. Yuh-you remember that?” Bill asked, feeling the same bad feeling he had felt when all the misfortune occurred a month and a half ago.

“Yes, I remember that perfectly. I know I went out to look for him but what happened next... is blurry. I think I found Georgie... Was anyone coming out of the sewer...? No, wait... I think I dreamed that... I... Ugh!” You howled in pain at the same time you grabbed your head in your hands; you felt as if your brain was melting in lava inside your skull. The beep of the machines rang again.

Bill looked at you in alarm just like the two doctors who soon acted. Dr. Handor approached you enough to talk to you over your shoulder while the other doctor prepared something from the nearby cabinets. Bill was horrified to see a syringe filled with a yellowish liquid in the gloved hands of the second doctor. “Breathe calmly, Miss Aubrey. Just like me: Inhale... Exhale... Re-inhale... Continue like this, you are doing very well. Soon you will not feel more pain, I promise you”.

Taking advantage of the distraction, the other doctor injected the contents of the syringe into a venoclysis canal, which was opportunely linked to your left hand. With the breathing exercise and the effects of the possible sedative doing its job, after a while, you stopped feeling that intense headache and your desire to sleep was increasing. You lay on the couch pillow, yawning and looking at Bill sleepily. “See you later?”

“Of-of course, I'll be here when yuh-you wake up later. I'll bring yuh-you Matt if you want, I pro-pro-promise you”, said Bill, with a tender smile on his lips and gathering all the courage he needed to give you a chaste kiss on the forehead. “S-s-sweet dreams, ____”.

Maybe all of that was too cheesy for your liking (although deep down, very deep down, you admitted that you liked Bill to treat you that way), but you also gave him one last smile back with a “thank you, Bill-Billy” before you closed your eyes and fell asleep in the arms of Morpheus. Bill exhaled in relief at this, relaxing his tense shoulders from the pressure. Every day was the same for him: a roller coaster of emotions that rose and fell at infarction speeds; he hated not knowing anything about his brother, he hated that his parents ignored him, and above all, he hated to see you were suffering. Although, at least for now, seeing your relaxed expression when sleeping, he could feel some calm in his dying soul. One step at a time to pick up the fragments of his broken heart.

“Sh-sh-she’s go-going to be alright?” Bill asked when he looked up at Dr. Handor, who immediately smiled sympathetically.

“The worst is over. You have nothing to worry about, boy”, the doctor patted Bill's shoulder friendly, and meanwhile the other doctor was checking something on the machines and then left the room. “She’s only sedated so that her brain doesn’t enter another crisis. So for now it is better that she sleeps, her body needs to release all that accumulated stress from the accident. She will get well eventually”.

“O-o-okay...” From then on, Bill didn't ask any more questions. He was afraid to ask the man about your apparent memory loss, he didn't want to know if it was permanent or not. _Although I suppose it’s better not to remember a horrible event like that. I just hope it doesn't affect other memories._

Both left the ICU and headed to the waiting room where your mother and Bill's friends were meeting with a nurse named Rhoda. She was saying something to all of them when she spotted Dr. Russ Handor from the hall, then greeted him and proceeded to give him the word with a smile. Dr. Handor addressed them —Bill being by his side— and began to professionally recount everything that had happened to you from your awakening to the moment they had to sedate you. Bill didn’t know if he did it on purpose or not, but the man had luxury detail in the parts that Bill participated; his cheeks blushed with sorrow upon hearing the doctor say those things. The interested looks of Eddie and Stan were evident while Richie smiled mischievously at him with an arched eyebrow.

When Dr. Handor ended by saying that you would wake up very soon without many complications (except, of course, from the amnesia that he would have to evaluate later), your mother pounced on him to hug him. The joy and relief were evident on Clarissa Aubrey's face, giving the doctor all the thanks in the world before going to hug Bill and give him an affectionate kiss on his right temple. Both Nurse Rhoda and his friends also celebrated the news, each one in their own way. And then Bill, sobbing with happiness, realized something that made him smile much more. The next time you woke up, you would be better and surrounded by your loved ones. He would also be there with your beloved stuffed turtle in his hands, just as he promised.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For now, the updates of this story are going to be relatively quick: one chapter per week, being posted on weekends . This will remain constant for a few weeks. Many of the first chapters had already been written for some time ago, so I only review them during the week for errors or something I would like to change before publishing them. But when this "reservation" is over, well, you know, the times between updates will change. I will let you know when that comes, so don't worry about that. 
> 
> See ya until next time ~


	4. Summer's Here!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No more school, just the beginning of the summer of 1989.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Someone else noticed something off about Beverly's green bag? No? Really? Just me? Okay... Her bag was pretty dry and clean at the moment she was talking with Ben (as if Greta had never thrown that garbage water at her, in the first place). I'm just saying... Please, enjoy the chapter~!

The arrival of summer was already around the corner, the July break that all Derry High School students were eagerly awaiting. It wasn’t long before the school bell rang and classes ended. Mrs. Douglas used the little time she had left to distribute the final corrected exams to her seventh grade students. Group 7-A. The corrected exams were from the Spanish exam. You, being surnamed Aubrey, were one of the first students to receive the qualified exam in your hands. But you couldn't leave yet, no one could leave until the last student on the list received their exam sheet with the grade mark well marked in red ink. So for the moment, while Mrs. Douglas was calling the last students in alphabetical order, you had to distract yourself by looking at your own exam.

Your grade on the exam didn’t surprise you at all, it wasn’t an excellent A nor a good B, but a regular C. As a result of the accident, one of the repercussions that haunted you besides the amnesia (you weren’t able to remember none of the incident, no matter how hard you tried), were the constant migraines. Those migraines that gave you a terrible headache almost every day and didn't let you focus at all; studying and doing overdue homework had become a real ordeal. Even at certain points, you felt like you passed out from the effort. The medications you were taking eased those headaches but didn’t make them go away completely. Your mother seriously talked to your teachers about your condition, explaining the details Dr. Handor gave her when she received your diagnosis, and all of your teachers were quite condescending about it. Especially Coach Black, who always said to you before his classes: “If you feel bad, let me know. I’ll take you to the infirmary on my shoulders”.

The other teachers would also help you during the following months with all kinds of special jobs so that you could pass your subjects with less difficulties. Instead of typical exercises, they used to assign research projects or interactive talks to grade you. Homework assignments became more flexible to do and less rigorous in content; your classmates didn’t complain about this, on the contrary, they liked the change made by the teachers and even some of them thanked you for it. The vast majority of classes ceased to be so extensive, tedious, and loaded with material. And already for the semester exams, the only thing that each one had to do was simply review everything learned throughout the semester. In some exams you did better than in others, but you managed to pass all of them and that filled you with relief.

By the time the bell rang, all the students had already been called by Mrs. Douglas and had their graded papers with them. Both boys and girls grabbed their backpacks dangling from their respective seats and, like a stampede of wildebeests, zebras, and buffaloes across the savannah, ran without control from the classroom into the hallway. Some were squeezed in the door as they left. Mrs. Douglas waited for a while before she went out herself, walking calmly unlike her students. After that, only two children stayed in the classroom for a few more minutes: you and another boy named Benjamin Hanscom. Compared to the rest of your classmates, you didn’t know him that well; Ben had recently moved to Derry. With light brown hair and dark eyes, what stood out the most about him was his fatness. Maybe that’s why he was an easy target for bullies.

You approached him with light steps and touched his shoulder in a wake-up call. He turned to you immediately and almost knocked over the model in his hands. His model was from history class and depicted the Water Tower of Derry, a metal frame and screws with many gallons of water. He quickly tossed his model aside while looking nervously at you, “I'm so sorry! You're alright, ____? Didn't I hurt you?”

“I should be the one who should be apologizing, I almost ruined your model. Is very cute. And don’t worry, it barely touched me, so there’s no harm”, you said smiling and waving your hands in calm. Ben's concerned features relaxed as he saw you in good shape and undisturbed.

“What a relief. It took me several hours to do it, but it’s already qualified, so it doesn't matter if it gets damaged. What worried me was that you had hurt yourself with it”, Ben smiled, calm in his racing heart. “Were you going to ask me something?”

“What? Oh yes, I had almost forgotten!” You exclaimed, laughing and putting a hand to your head. This kind of things only happened to you. “Do you have a planned vacation plan? You know, going for a bike ride, playing a prank on your neighbor, things like that”.

“Eh, well... If I'm honest with you, I don't really have a plan. Maybe go to the public library to read some books but beyond that, I have nothing else to do. I'm new in Derry and I don't have many friends to play with... You are the only true friend I have for now”.

“Then don't say more! One of these days we will go out partying, you and me. We’ll have fun playing around and I’ll take the opportunity to introduce you to my other friends, I am sure you’ll like them. You might even join their club! That would be great, I imagine. Write it all down on your calendar, Ben. And keep an eye on your home telephone, because I swear I'll call you!”

Ben's eyes sparkled with excitement at your fabulous idea, though the uncertain tone of his voice seemed to say otherwise. “Are you serious, ____? I'd like to go out and play with you and everything, but what if your friends don't like me? If they don't want me at their club? I wouldn’t like you to fight with them because of me...”

“I doubt that very much, the probability that there will be any discussion or fight between us is practically nil. Also, they just aren't like that. I can assure you that they’ll accept you into their club with open arms, they accept anyone who wants to enter. Except, of course, Henry Bowers and his group of thugs. They don't even want to see them in a figurine. But since you're not Henry or any of his friends, I don't see any problem in trying. So what do you tell me? Do you accept my invitation?”

“Alright, I'll do it”.

“Yes, evil triumphed! Believe me when I tell you that you will not regret this”, you briefly hugged Ben and then hurried out of the place with your backpack on your shoulder, but not before remembering one more thing. “Ah yes, check your yearbook. I left you a note”.

Whatever Ben said after that, you didn't listen to him. The hallways of the school were crowded with students of all ages and grades, many of them opening and closing their lockers while others were talking to their friends, either walking or running. Amidst the tumult of children and adolescents, you could distinguish at distance the heads of the four members of the Losers Club, especially Stan's. Above his light brown curly hair, his Kippah stood out, a small cap worn by all male Jews. You were too far away to listen to what they were saying (and it should be mentioned, that the voices of everyone else who rumbled in the hallway didn't help either, they didn't at all), but you could almost bet all your money that the boys were talking about something from Stan. If he was wearing that hat it was because he would surely go to the synagogue, perhaps to practice some Torah with his father.

You hurried your way to get as close as possible to your friends, sailing in the middle of a sea of people and walking narrow paths made by their conglomerate bodies. Somehow, saying “permission, please” as you pass and dodging some people's unconscious nudges, you managed to miraculously get out of that crowd. The distance you needed to reach Bill and the others was little, a few meters clear. When you got to them, you suddenly threw your arms around Bill's neck to hug him from behind —with Bill nearly knocking both of you to the ground due to the shock and the added weight— while trying to greet the rest of your friends over his shoulder.

“Here are my favorite Losers! What's up guys? Were you planning to leave without me?” You released Bill from your embrace so he could turn to see you while you went about your business. “Because if all of you say yes...”

“Leave you? Impossible! This fool in love that we have as a friend would kill us”, said Richie pointing to Bill's red cheeks.

“B-b-beep beep, Richie”.

“What? Don't you dare deny it, Bill or yes?” Richie replied to Bill, adjusting his glasses and turning his gaze back to you with a somewhat Machiavellian smile. “You should have seen him, ____. When he found out that you were still locked up with Mrs. Douglas, Bill made the saddest puppy eyes he could and begged us to wait for you. And the worst of all, he convinced us! But honestly, you were taking a long time and I already wanted to go home, so-Ouch!”

Eddie gave Richie a slight slap to shut him up while Stan stepped in for him, shooting him a warning look. “What Richie is trying to say is that we all choose to wait more calmly for you in the schoolyard. You know we would never abandon you, ____”.

“Yes, we would never do something like that to you”, added Eddie.

“I know, I was just joking with you. Keep calm, my friends”, you said laughing with a waving of hands in peace. Bill smiled tenderly at this and his friends noticed, though they said nothing, even Richie. “But we are all here! Let's go, the vacations are waiting for us!”

All together continued with the exit of the school; some hallways were still crowded with students, though not as much as before. Bill had his hand entwined with yours as both walked alongside with the rest of the Losers, who again had Stan as their main topic of conversation. His conversion from child to adult in a Jewish ceremony or something similar. Stan explained to everyone that to become a man, he simply had to read something from the Torah and say a few words, but Richie kept refuting him. “Yeah, of course, only that. Then the Rabbi will come, pull down your pants and cut off the tip of your penis again. But when he finds nothing, he will tell the crowd: where is the beef?” It didn't take you long to laugh at what he said, neither did Eddie.

If anyone across Derry thought Trashmouth Tozier was going to change his quirky vocabulary, just by having you or another girl around him, how wrong was that person to think that. Terribly wrong. The other Losers knew this from experience. “Still, there's more funner ways to become a man".

“More fun ways, you mean”, Stan corrected him.

“Shit”.

For a brief moment, neither you nor the others understood the reason for Richie's moan until everyone followed his sight noticed the four teenagers who were leaning against the wall near there. Henry Bowers and his entourage of bullies, glancing maliciously at any boy who passed in front of them. You felt how Bill, in a matter of seconds, tightened the grip of his hand with yours and he got closer to you, brushing shoulders with you. Richie adjusted his glasses to look nervously at Eddie and Stan, who also had uneasy expressions. The main exit was a few meters away, up a flight of stairs. However, to get to it, you had to walk through the Bowers Gang territory, right in their sights, in the middle of the entire hallway. The back door to the school was no longer an option, it was far away. So it only remained to follow the same path.

Cautious but confident, you and the Losers kept walking, reaching the center of the hall where they met the thugs face to face. The first was Patrick Hockstetter, who smiled disturbingly at the sight of them, though his psychotic eyes focused more on Richie. Damn degenerate. Then followed Belch Huggings —named Reginald— laughing at Stan's Kippah on his head, while trying to throw a burp (hence his nickname, Belch, that in other words is burp) in Eddie's face. Then came Henry Bowers, who was deadly serious and his arms crossed at the height of his chest. He clicked his tongue in annoyance as you passed him before glaring at Bill, who stared back at him fervently. If looks killed, those two were already dead and buried six feet underground. The last was Victor Criss, the least emotional of the four bullies; his expression of nonchalance applied to all of the Losers and to you… well, he only diverted his attention elsewhere.

Once that bad time was over, moving away from them with each step closer to the exit, Richie pursed his lips in relief and asked to you. “Do you think they'll sign my yearbook? Dear Richie... sorry for taking a hot, steaming dump in your backpack last month. Have a good summer”.

You laughed, Richie laughed and the other Losers did too. What a good joke. On the hallway stairs, the laughter continued until they stopped abruptly when Greta Bowie appeared, angrily climbing each step. A seventh-grader —in the same group that Bill, Eddie, and Richie were in, group 7-B— who used gossip and false rumors to ungracefully “kill” other girls. In other words, a real bitch. As Greta climbed, she didn't care at all about the people she pushed or tripped over, one of them being Stan. If it hadn't been for Eddie, who reflexively grabbed his arm, Stan would have fallen completely due to the shoulder collision he had with her. It all happened in seconds. Greta continued to climb the stairs as if nothing was happening as Stan straightened up on his feet, supported by Eddie, and realizing how close he came to rolling to the bottom of the stairs.

The rest of you and the Losers didn't like at all what Greta did not only to Stan, but to other students as well. The simple idea of Stan, or of any friend, hitting himself badly when falling because of the inconsideration of that oxygenated blonde, made your blood boil instantly. And to add more to your discomfort and anger, you had the certainty that Greta's bad temper was reserved for someone else. Deep down, you knew that she only took it out on those who were on her way, the worst of the worst she had in store for her true victim. That person's name suddenly popped into your mind, and without realizing it, you released Bill's hand. He realized this and looked at you puzzled, opened his mouth to say something, surely to ask you if you were okay, but you spoke first.

“You better go ahead and wait for me on the schoolyard, guys. I just remembered that I left something important on my seat in the classroom. I'm going to take advantage of the fact that they haven't closed the school yet to go look for it and put it in my backpack. It won't take long, I promise you”.

There were no objections or questions from the Losers. You didn't give them the time to do them in the first place. You were up the stairs again when Richie yelled something you couldn't understand. Your feet touched the floor of the long hallway again, and out of the corner of your eye, you saw Henry and his friends. They were still quietly leaning against the clear wall of the hallway and seemed to have no intention of moving from there, at least not yet. They also didn't turn their heads in your direction, so they didn't know you were there with them and the few students who kept walking around the place. It was those few students that they had under surveillance. Well, one less problem in the list, now there was only one named Greta. Quickly, you found her walking to the women's bathroom on that floor and you decided to keep up with her at a certain distance so she wouldn't see you arrive.

The bathroom itself didn’t stand out at all, it was simply a bathroom like any other in the school, with the interior of the cubicles marked in blue, black or red marker. Names written in the company of ugly or obscene phrases and one or another scribbled drawing, mainly. You could clearly hear the shrill voices of Greta Bowie, Sally Mueller, and Marcia Fadden. Rich and spoiled girls from West Broadway. Suddenly there was a loud, sharp thump that made you jump in reaction. The thump seemed like a kick to a door and was accompanied by Greta's derogatory talk.

“Are you in there by yourself, Beaver-ly? Or do you have half the guys in the school with you, huh slut? I know you're in there, you little shit, I can smell you”.

The smell of cigarette smoke, nicotine, was palpable in the air. You felt a slight tickling inside your nose every time you inhaled. Greta could be right about that: someone was smoking in one of the bathroom cubicles and that person was Beverly Marsh. Smoking was strictly prohibited on the premises of Derry High School (by order of the principal, Harold Metcalf, and deputy principal, Gwendolyn Rayburn), but Greta wasn’t there for regulatory reasons. She wasn’t any type of inspector or teacher, in charge of preventing students from breaking any rules or regulations of the campus. No way. She was just there to bully Beverly.

“Which is it, Greta? Am I a slut or a little shit? Make up your mind”, said Beverly in response from the closed cubicle.

“You're trash. We just wanted to remind you”, Greta replied.

You heard the noise of something falling and something else being dragged across the floor tiles. Whatever it was, that thing sounded wet, like it was filled with water. That wasn’t good, not good at all. You decided to go deeper into the bathroom to see what was really happening in there, you wanted to know what the hell were planning to do those girls. When you fully entered the bathroom, you were in full view of the three of them, but that didn't give a damn to you. Greta looked at you between shocked and pissed off, while Marcia and Sally had that touch of nervous fear. Yes, that fear that we all felt when we are caught doing something bad or wrong. In Marcia's hands was a black garbage bag and Sally was helping her lift it over one of the cubicles where Beverly was locked up. Greta's plan was quite obvious.

“Seriously, girls. I think you already made you point very clear. You don't need to do that, so put it down and put it back in its place”, you said to Marcia and Sally.

Both girls looked at each other before addressing to Greta, the head behind everything. The outrage in Greta's eyes was more than evident, but the angry grin on her face stood out more when she turned to you, “and what do you want, ____? Are you defending that bitch?”

“No, Greta, I am defending no one. I'm just doing you a favor. Don't waste your time with her anymore, she's not worth it. Summer is here to enjoy it, and you prefer to stay here for a while? In this filthy bathroom with someone like her?” Your logic was effective immediately with Marcia and Sally, although with Greta it wasn't that easy. With her, you always had to exert a little more pressure to convince her of something. “Also, if you want to keep reminding her of what she is, you can do so when we return to class. She’s not going to disappear during these vacations like those poor children or yes, Greta?

Your suggestion seemed to have pleased Greta, her former expression transformed into one of some satisfaction. “You and your damn voice of reason. Let's go girls”, Greta gestured to her friends and they dropped the black garbage bag, full of water and trash, on the floor. “You were saved this time by ____, but don't worry, it won't repeat itself when we meet again. Have a nice summer, Beaver-ly”.

When that trio of bratty girls finally came out of the bathroom, you smiled triumphantly as you released a breath of relief. You saved someone from suffering at the hands of Greta and her friends, and you didn't have to fight or anything like that. What good luck! You could already feel calmer. Before long, the door of one of the three cubicles opened and Beverly Marsh appeared before your eyes. If you had to describe her to someone else, the first thing you would say is that Beverly was a very pretty girl. Her fire-reddish hair was moderately long and she almost always wore it tied in a ponytail. Her gray storm eyes and freckles across her face perfectly complemented her crisp skin. All of that, along with a good body in development stage, made her look like a promising candidate to be a supermodel or someone related to fashion in the future.

“Thanks for chasing them away, ____. You saved me from another of Greta's evils”, said Beverly, hugging you in greeting and thanks for a few seconds before releasing you. “What was this time?”

“Water mixed with trash, a good combination to wet and stink anything. Although I must admit that Greta is running out of ideas. That technique had already been used last year”, you argued in a comical tone that made Beverly and you laugh, “and now that we are on the subject, I hope you’ll forgive me for what I said earlier. You know, that you weren't worth it and stuff...”

“Don't worry about it, I know you were doing it for my own good. You are not like Greta and her people, so there is nothing to forgive”, she confessed, winking at you, “but I should congratulate you on your acting skills. Every day you improve your role as a typical popular girl”.

“Isn't it? Thanks for noticing. It is quite an effort, but it is a worthwhile effort if it means that I can use my popularity for the benefit of others”, you said in confidence.

“I think so. You do that so Bowers doesn't bother your friends so much, right?” She replied, adjusting her green backpack over her shoulder as you nodded at her question. She smiled at you tenderly. “You're a good person, ____. Never change”.

“You shouldn't worry about that, my dear. I couldn't change my way of being even if I wanted to or someone paid me a million dollars. Mission impossible”, you nudged her friendly, “but enough of talking about me. We better get out of this bathroom quickly before Mr. Fazio leaves us locked up for the whole summer. You know what that janitor is like”.

Beverly laughed, nodding. You and she, side by side, calmly emerged from the bathroom. There were no real reasons to run. In the hall, there was almost no one there, there were only three or four young people taking out a few things from their lockers and then putting them in their backpacks. And it was then that you realized, with growing nervousness, that the Bowers Gang weren't there either. Almost all of them had disappeared, or rather, only one was present: Victor Criss. His dark eyes watched you from the wall where he was still leaning. He wasn't looking at Beverly, nor was he looking at the other remaining students. He looked at you and only you; you swallowed hard. _Shit, why now?_ You thought.

“Hey, ____”; Beverly quickly caught your attention, “how about we go out into the back door? Let's avoid a problem with him. Bowers and the other two must already be outside”.

“I don't think I can come with you, Bev”, Victor Criss's impassive face and his gaze on you made your neck and back shiver down. _He was waiting. Of course he was waiting for me, Henry ordered him to_ , and you told yourself. “My friends are waiting for me at the entrance of the school. I cannot abandon them, not now. I hope you understand”.

“Take it easy, I get it. Just…” Beverly glanced at the platinum blonde before looking at you with a somewhat unsure smile, “just be careful, okay?”

You agreed to her request and she gave you a short but loving hug, which you reciprocated. The moment the two of you separated, you looked at Beverly with determination and she caught your message instantly. She smiled at you once more, in the form of a farewell, and she walked down the hall until she disappeared from your and Victor's sight. It was then that he took the opportunity to detach himself from the wall and walk threateningly towards you. Well, it would be an exaggeration to say he looked threatening, but his emotionless countenance was convincing enough to make anyone uncomfortable, including you. When he got to where you were —standing in front of you— he looked you up and down like he was checking something out.

“I thought you were going down the toilet. Too bad that didn't happen…” He said it not in the best sense of humor. “Whatever, Henry is waiting for you. Let's go”.

Victor turned around and gestured for you to follow him to the stairs. You followed him without protest or complaint, since you didn’t want to test his patience. He, like Peter Gordon (Marcia Fadden's boyfriend and occasional member of the Bowers Gang), could be a relatively quiet bully and easier to deal with than the others, but no one really knew how far that calm came. That supposed patience that could be short. It was better for you to just listen to him and keep up with him as he walked down the stairs to the front door, where a little further in front of it was the school's front yard.

There, in the courtyard, were your beloved Losers around a garbage can, talking. Surely, they had already thrown their notebooks in the garbage can and they were only waiting for your arrival, just as you promised. All good until Henry Bowers and his friends —except Victor, who was with you at the entrance of the school, holding your arm so that you didn’t interfere—, approached them. Henry tugged Richie out of the backpack, causing him to collide with Stan and both boys falling onto the pasty ground. Patrick laughed out loud at the sight of them and knelt down a little to grab the fallen Kippah from Stan's head. “Nice frisbee, flamer”, he said before throwing it toward the open window of the school bus, which was passing through the area. Belch was not far behind either, burping in Eddie's ear. Poor Eddie, he wanted to vomit upon hearing such a filthy thing. “Fuckin' losers”, was what Henry mumbled as he passed between them and shoved Bill out of his way.

That was kind of a sign to Victor. You felt how he tightened his grip on your arm, being firmer but without hurting you, and practically dragged you to where they were all. Your friends' eyes were on you, but the one that stood out the most was Bill's. Bill watched the whole scene with anger, very angry. How dared Criss treat you that way? And Bill got even more upset when Criss threw you into Bowers' arms and Bowers, with a mischievous smile painted on his lips, got closer to him and wrapped his shoulders in a forced hug. Bill's body tensed and he clenched his fists in frustration. Bowers was making fun of him, Bowers was using you to make fun, without shamelessness, of whom you considered your true friends.

“You're finally here, Dolly. I was so worried about you, I thought you wouldn't come”, you growled inwardly at his sarcasm. You hated that with all your soul and also that damn nickname that Henry had reserved exclusively for you: Dolly, little doll. You weren't any doll that he could manipulate at his will. “I hope you're done fooling around by now. I want to leave this damn place”.

“If you want to leave so badly, why didn’t you leave a while ago?” You asked Henry in a tone of mock outrage. “Reginald's car is right there and he has the keys, not me”, you pointed at Belch with your finger and then at your backpack, “also, I have my skates with me. I don't need the car to go home. You can go now if you want”.

“And leave you with these losers you like to talk and play so much? Never. I'd rather like to you suck my dick than that fag of Denbrough”, he said, like it was the most normal thing on the planet.

And with that, you already made it official: Henry Bowers exasperated you more than Greta Bowie; he already had you almost on the verge with all that shit he was saying to you. But Bill was much enraged than you. The knuckles of his fists were completely white from the pressure he exerted on his fingers. His taut body made a vein protrude from his neck, the jugular vein. His jaw and teeth were clenched tight. And his blue eyes reflected an inconceivable amount of hatred and anger. Bill was angry. No. He was really and absolutely furious.

“You s-s-s-suck, Bowers!” He exclaimed with intensity.

“Shut up, Bill”, Richie replied, but that didn't help.

“Did you s-s-s-say something, Bi-Bi-Bi-Billy?" Henry asked, stuttering falsely as he released his arm from you to get closer to Bill and come face to face with him. Their blue eyes sparkled with danger. “You got a free ride this year cuz of your little brother. Ride's over, Denbrough”.

“Henry…” You wanted to say something other than his name, yet he cut you off.

“Shut your mouth, ____”, Henry said your name and that made you worry even more. He hardly ever called you by your name, and if he did, it was because he was speaking in complete seriousness. Now you feared for Bill's safety. “I want to break this idiot's face”.

Both Henry and Bill seemed so ready to fight that you had the intention of turning to look another way. You didn't want to see how they were going to kill each other. Eddie, Richie and Stan didn't want that either. However, fortunately for you and the Losers, nothing bad happened. Henry was inches away from hitting Bill in the face, when he stopped in his tracks when he saw who was watching him, a few yards away. Nearby, a police car was parked on the side of the street. A pale and anguished-looking lady (Betty Ripsom's mother, missing since May 25), was being accompanied by two officers. One of those officers was his father, who was staring at him sternly as he took off his dark sunglasses.

Known as Butch, Oscar Bowers was one of those many Derry Police officers who had been tasked with patrolling the streets of the city on a regular basis, in order to find missing children and to avoid a greater number of cases by having constant police surveillance. It had all been proposed by Commissioner Borton and the other officers like Butch accepted it. So to the Derry population, Butch Bowers was like any other cop, a man doing his job of protecting and serving. But for Henry it was much more than that. It was his father. Not a very good father… Belch and Victor were very aware of it and you, in a way, suspected it.

In your opinion, Henry was more than intelligent to not to hit Bill in front of Butch. “This summer it’s gonna be a hurt-train, for you and your faggot friends”, he claimed scornfully, “and ____ isn’t going to save your ass anymore. Not you, not your friends. She is mine. Did you hear that correctly, Denbrough? Mine”, Henry confessed before licking the palm of his right hand and then rubbing it across Bill's face. His saliva stamped on Bill's left cheek; a promise of what was to come soon.

After that, Henry didn’t do or say anything else to Bill. He and the rest of his gang turned away from the Losers and headed toward Belch's car, a 1979 Pontiac Trans Am Nocturne Blue. You stayed for a minute or two more. You took the time to say goodbye to your friends and also to give Bill a handkerchief, which he used immediately to remove the trace of saliva that was on his left cheek. He looked at you gratefully and you returned his gaze with a very gentle and loving smile, which also made him smile. A silent “thank you” and “you welcome” shared between the two of you, before you left for Belch's car where Henry waited impatiently for you from outside the passenger door. The others were already in the car, with Belch at the wheel.

“You do it on purpose, Dolly”, Henry said in a grunt as he opened the door.

“What thing?” You asked as you approached.

“Don’t play the fool. Your thing with Denbrough infuriates me”, he replied.

“My thing with Bill? Are you jealous, Henry?” You hinted.

“You know what? Better forget it and get in the car. My patience is running out”, he said sharply but you stared at him, doing nothing. “Do I have something on my face? What are you looking at? Get moving now!"

Henry grabbed you by your shoulders and threw you into the vehicle, landing miraculously on the passenger's padded seat and not on top of the hand lever, which was a short distance away, or between the legs of the great Belch Huggins. “Fucking gentleman are you, Henry!” You yelled at him in sarcasm and frustration as Belch gave a short laugh and gave you a hand. You quickly rejoined with his help and turned slightly to give Henry your best display of your middle finger up before making your way between the front two seats to reach the rear, sitting between Victor and Patrick. Henry didn't take long to get into the car after that and closed the door next to him, once he sat down in the seat next to the driver's. He opened the glove box in front of him and took a cigar out of it, placed it in his mouth and quickly set fire to the other end. He exhaled a small trail of white smoke a few seconds later before inhaling again, smoking the cigar with pleasure.

“You know where”, Henry said to Belch and Belch nodded, placing the key in its slot, roaring the engine of the vehicle and set it in motion on the street.

The destiny was your home, of course. You, traveling quietly to home, in the exclusive Bowers Gang car? “Because she is Henry Bowers' girlfriend”, more than a jealous or gossipy teenager would say. You would neither affirm nor deny that. Your relationship with Henry and his gang was quite complicated and difficult to explain even to Bill, who kept asking why you were hanging out with them. “It is a mutual agreement”, was what you once confessed to him in a recess hour while both of you had lunch, but you knew that Bill wouldn’t understand you. Eddie, Richie and Stan didn't either, and you didn't blame them. Your reasons for being around Henry and the others were a real headache and you preferred to save yourself the trouble. Additionally, Henry would kill you if he found out that you had discussed the matter with anyone else. Your recurring rides in Belch's car was a method that Henry used to make sure you kept your mouth shut.

Of course, this time, the journey to your home would be a little longer than usual. All thanks to Henry. His insistence on looking for someone he described in derogatory and racist language kept Belch driving in circles on Kansas Street for almost half an hour. By now, you more or less had an idea of who Henry wanted to find but you didn’t give much importance. Victor seemed to agree with you on that, even though he said nothing and kept looking at the window next to him. Patrick, on the other hand, was very excited about what he himself called “a real hunt” that was worth doing. Poor boy if they ever found him: Henry would order Belch to run over him as soon as he saw him and Patrick would be eager to see that.

 _I just wanted to go home and see my mom_ , you said to yourself in a mental sigh as you leaned back in the seat and crossed your arms at your chest height. With the exception of Victor, you watched the teenage bullies with resignation, especially Henry. _Without a doubt, this summer is going to be intense._

And it would be no coincidence to say, that you were absolutely right in thinking that. That summer was going to be pretty intense... but not in the way you imagined.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading and see ya next time!


	5. Searching in the Barrens

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Searching in the Barrens? For what? For who? For Georgie, obviously! All was Bill's idea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Being completely honest with all of you, the first half of this chapter was the product of a great imagination mixed with some want to write, and the second half was the result of when laziness knocked on my door, the want to write went away on a vacation to Rapture or Columbia, and I tried to finish the chapter without looking too bad in the process... But, hey! I hope you still like some of this chapter.

It was just the first day of summer, you really didn't feel any rush or pressure to leave home and go explore all of Derry with your friends. You had all the time in the world to do that and much more. However, when you received that call from Bill, early in the morning —at breakfast time—, in which he invited you to go with him and the other boys to the Barrens, your vacation mentality changed quickly. What was special about the Barrens, a terrain that, in irony to its name, was full of all kinds of vegetation? What was the purpose of going there? Find Georgie, of course.

Several months had passed since the disappearance of Georgie Denbrough, but Bill still had hope with him. From day one of his disappearance, Bill used every moment he had free from school to search for him, to try to find him and bring him back home. And even though he still couldn't find him, Bill didn't want to give up, he didn't want to give him up for dead like his parents. Eddie, Richie and Stan always accompanied him on his expeditions to the sewers and places near them, and you didn't have the courage to tell him no every time he invited you to some of those expeditions. Georgie was like a little brother to you and if you had any chance of finding him (or in the worst case, his corpse), then you would finally feel at peace with yourself. After all, it was your fault that he disappeared in the first place.

From one moment to the next, you went from sitting at the dining room table, happily eating your breakfast with your mother and stepfather, to being in your room, packing in your backpack certain things that you considered necessary to carry. Baubles, a pair of slippers and a flashlight, mainly. Although you also tried to put in the backpack a book of myths and legends that rested on your desk. The book had nothing to do with exploring the sewers, but you would take advantage of leaving the house to return it to the Derry Public Library, since it was a borrowed book and you didn’t want to pay an additional surcharge for delivering it after the date stipulated in the card. And with that last, everything was ready. You smiled with a nod as you closed the backpack and put it on your shoulder before leaving your room and going downstairs.

“Don't forget your skates, honey”, your mother's voice said from the kitchen as she rinsed a few dishes and glasses down the sink.

“Yes mom!” You exclaimed back.

Your skates were hung on the wall that connected to the staircase, both painted in a metallic luster of your favorite color and with fairly sturdy in-line wheels. You grabbed them instantly and sat on the steps to put them on your feet. While you were doing it, you laughed when you remembered their ridiculous and not very original names, the names that you had given them when your stepfather gave them to you on your last birthday: Lefty, the skate of the left foot, and Righty, the one of the right foot. After a while, and with both skates on, you got up from the steps and went to the dining room to say goodbye to your stepfather.

“Why do you come out of the house like a jet every time that Denbrough boy calls you? Are you going on a secret date with him or what?” He asked the moment you kissed him on the cheek.

Hearing his questioning, your face immediately turned redder than a tomato and, for a moment, you didn't know how to answer him. You felt a lump in your throat and a conflict in your mind. Of course you couldn't tell him the truth (not in a million years would he or your mother allow you to go to a place as dirty and dark as a sewer, not even to find Bill's missing brother who may or may not be alive), but you also couldn't leave in his head that erroneous and absolutely crazy idea that your leaving was an excuse to go on a supposed secret date. You were almost totally certain that if your stepfather came to believe that story from the date, he would immediately go get a rifle and then chase Bill around Derry screaming, "You're still not worthy of her!" or "She's still too young for that kind of thing!". Just imagining that exaggerated but possible scenario made you want to laugh nervously; you didn't want something like that to happen.

You inhaled deeply to relax and think your words very well in a white lie convincing enough to make him change his mind. The blush disappeared from your face and, with a confident smile, the words came from your lips. “Yes, Bill called me to go out but not on a date, but to play. He is going to premiere his game of cricket in Richie's yard. You know who Richie is, right? My friend with glasses. Well, Bill said he would love for me to go to play with them. Other of my friends will also be there to make the two teams of players”.

“I see. Okay, you can play with your friends. I don't want you to keep them waiting any longer”, your stepfather believed your lie... halfway, “although it still seems strange to me that this friend of yours, Denbrough, wants to play so early”.

“I know, but it's better early than late, right?” You replied anxiously.

Your stepfather was about to say something when your mother entered the dining room, drying her hands with a medium towel, and approached him to nudge him between the ribs that made him shudder a little before looking at her closely. You stifled a little laugh when you saw all that, your stepfather's surprised expression was funny. “Stop making ____ nervous, Andy. Can't you see she's so excited to play with her friends? It is summer and you know how the children are, they want to make the most of each day”.

“Yes, yes, yes, I understand. You didn't need to do that. You know I'm very sensitive in that area… “, he confessed the latest in a half-whisper that you still heard very clearly and made you raise an eyebrow in interest. A weak point, huh? Good. With your curious gaze on him, your stepfather quickly recovered himself by coughing falsely in his fist and continuing to speak as if none of the above had happened. “You look like a statue with skates, ____. Don't you think your friends must be waiting for you? You have my permission and your mother's, so you can go now. But I want you here before nightfall, did you hear me?”

“Not a minute late. Understood”, you had a smile of happiness; you could finally leave the house without any problem. You went to him to give him a light hug and then to your mother to kiss her a goodbye on the cheek that made her smile too. _I love them, I really love them_ , you thought that when you finally walked away from both of them to walk with your skates to the front door, turned the knob and opened it, taking one last look at your parents before leaving the house and closing the door behind you.

The first thing you felt when you were outside was the warmth of the radiant sun, shining at its peak from the cloudless sky. Its powerful light dazzled anyone who looked up. Then came the summer wind that swept through the town and subtly moved the things that were in its path: from the leaves of the trees, the flowers and grass in the gardens, to the caps, hair and clothes of all the children who played out there in the company of others. And of course you didn't forget everything else either. The smell of apple pie coming from some open windows, the singing of the birds that flew over the skies, the squirrels walking along the power lines, among many other things that your senses perceived. Everything around you was part of the summer and you loved that.

While Lefty and Righty were speeding you all over the place, you zigzagged along the way to avoid colliding with people or other obstacles. You and both of them worked in perfect harmony. Lefty and Righty's wheels spun non-stop and you propelled yourself with the force of your legs; the breeze was in your favor, making you almost fly like a majestic eagle. Beyond Kansas Street, going up and down several streets on the knoll, your first stop was finally in sight: the Derry Public Library. From the outside, the library looked like a simple and boring brick building, but inside, it revealed its true potential. A wonderful place with an exorbitant number of books of all types and sizes, where avid readers —if they desired— could give free rein to their imaginations.

With a few meters of distance to reach the library, you gradually lowered the thrust intensity of your legs and both Lefty and Righty responded to your action. The frantic turns of your rollerblades were also decreasing, and from one minute to another, you went from running like a cheetah to sliding gracefully down the sidewalk until you reached your destination. Once there, at the entrance to the library and holding onto the railing of the small staircase, you loosened the grip on your feet a little —to walk more comfortably— before climbing the stairs and entering the compound.

Everything was as you remembered it. Novels, short stories, encyclopedias, dictionaries, newspapers and many more books, all arranged alphabetically from their respective shelves. The atmosphere impregnated with that typical smell of paper mixed with something dusty that was quite familiar and even pleasant to perceive in the air. The two librarians doing their jobs as usual: in the children's section, Mrs. Davies reading to a group of young children a Norwegian fairy tale called “Three Billy Goats Gruff”, while Barbara Starrett, in the section for teenagers and young adults, reviewed various books which were then marked with a received stamp on the inside of the back cover.

Seeing the second librarian, you instinctively pulled the backpack from your shoulder to open it and remove the book from it, closing the backpack again and returning it to your back. Barbara Starrett was not very far from you but, being an old lady and being busy at work, she still had no notion of your presence. You didn't want to disturb the peace of the readers who were there (including Ben, who was deep in his review of photographs from the book "History of Derry"), so you decided to walk quietly to where the librarian was and gave a few touches to her shoulder. She immediately turned to you and saw you; you could see yourself reflected in her glasses.

“Is good to see you around here again, sweetheart. Are you coming to find another book for your collection?” She said, smiling like a grandmother smiles at her beloved grandchild.

“I come to return one”, you answered as you showed her the book of myths and legends in your hand, “the loan term for this book ends tomorrow but I prefer to return it today. I had already finished reading it for a while”.

“Oh, of course. Come on, follow me”, she started walking and you kept up with her until the both of you reached a corner where there was a small wooden table. You saw that on the table was a staggered stack of books and some new, unused cards. “You can leave your book here with the others. Your loan card has been in the office since the last time you came, but don't worry about it. I’ll sign the book as received on your card and I’ll deliver it to you the next time you come”, she said as she looked subtly at your skates and you smiled involuntarily, “because I suppose you can't wait to play around with your friends and they don't want to make you wait any longer”.

“Would you do that for me, Mrs. Starrett?” You asked with bright eyes in expectation.

“Of course I do, my girl. You are a good and educated girl who loves books... although sometimes you are somewhat forgetful”, she confessed with a low laugh, “I can do you the favor without any problem”.

You were going to shout thanks in excitement, but then you remembered that you were inside a library with several people reading in silence. Screaming would be a very stupid thing to do in a place like that, so you swallowed your exclamation and hugged Barbara Starrett before speaking in a relatively normal voice. “Thank you very much, Mrs. Starrett. Thank you very much, I’ll try not to forget the card in the future. I promise nothing but I’ll try".

You quickly separated from her and gave her a farewell gesture before going out of there; you saw Ben out of the corner of your eye but you kept going, there would be another time to greet him. When you were outside the store and down the small staircase, you stooped to readjust your skates and continue your journey to the Barrens. And that's when you saw it: Belch's car parked a few yards from the library. Belch, Patrick and Victor were sitting on the hood of the car while Henry was leaning against a stone monument with many engraved names of people who died in the First and Second World War.

 _What the hell are they doing here!?_ You thought exclaiming as you alternated your sight between them and a possible escape route to get out of there without them seeing you. Finding such escape route wasn't difficult at all —you were in an incredibly open space— but you still didn't understand why they were there. Or at least that's how it was until an image came to your mind: Ben. It was pretty obvious, Ben was in the library and the Bowers gang were waiting for him outside. You had every intention of going back inside the library and warning Ben of the bully threat, however you didn't. Your friends were waiting for you, you couldn't make them wait any longer for you, so you just left there. You just hoped that when Ben came out of the library, he would be attentive enough to notice Henry.

Lefty and Righty continued their wheel movement until you finally reached the Barrens in a matter of about 10 or 15 minutes. Your Loser friends were gathered near a large open sewer tunnel and you didn’t take long to join them; you took off your skates and exchanged them for the sneakers you had in your backpack. And when you finished, you tied the laces of both sneakers in a loop, it was then that you got closer to them to greet them and liven up the atmosphere. “What's up, guys? Tell me I'm not the only one who sees the same type of plant”.

Eddie was the first to answer you by looking around, “I don't know. I guess”.

“That’s poison ivy”; Stan said confidently, pointing to several bushes near you and him. “And that’s poison ivy. And that’s poison ivy”.

“Where? Where's the poison ivy?” Eddie asked in interest.

““Nowhere, not every fucking plant is poison ivy, Stanley!" Richie yelled from the sewer mouth as Bill stepped deeper into it with a lighted flashlight in hand. “Don't believe everything Stan says!”

“But don't be mad, princess”, you said mockingly, walking with flashlight in hand to where Richie was while Eddie and Stan followed behind, laughing at your comment. “Anyway, it's not that bad. If anyone wants to find out if the plants are poison ivy or not, just touch them. Itching instantly, right, Eddie?”

“Ok well, I'm starting to get itchy now and I'm pretty sure this is not good for me”, Eddie replied instantly.

You saw how Richie rolled his eyes as he listened to Eddie and, instead of playing along, he preferred to change the topic of conversation. “Do you use the same bathroom as your mother?” Richie asked, to which Eddie replied with a “sometimes, yes”. It didn't take to Richie even five seconds to start a very short but entertaining talk with Eddie about whether he had crabs or not and with Eddie reproaching him for not being funny. For being in a place as dirty and unpleasant as the sewer, Richie still didn't lose his sense of humor and you were grateful for it. Your life would be very gray and boring without your favorite comedian.

“Aren't you guys coming in?” He asked suddenly.

You were already deep inside in the smelly tunnel, almost with Bill and the sewage up to the ankles, when Richie asked that. Using the flashlight on, you turned to face the manhole entrance and noted that both Eddie and Stan were still there, with no intention of moving. Their faces showed a mixture of disgust and repulsion against the dark interior of the sewer. “Are you going to enter? Stan? Eddie?”

Stan simply shook his head as Eddie looked at the stagnant water in the tunnel before doing the same as Stan. “Uhuh that's gray water”.

“What the hell is gray water?” Richie questioned.

“It's basically piss and shit. So I'm just telling you... You guys are splashing around in millions of gallons of Derry pee”, Eddie explained.

“Okayyy... That sounds really gross. What do you think, Richie?” You looked at him.

“What do you think”, he said, grinning slightly, as he grabbed a wooden stick that was lying around and sniffed it for a few seconds before addressing Eddie. “Are, are you serious? Doesn't smell like caca to me, Señor”.

“O-o-okay I can smell it from here”, Eddie reproached in a wave of his hand.

“It's probably just your breath wafting back into your face”, Richie argued in a mocking tone towards Eddie that almost made you squeal with laughter. You didn't laugh… so much.

Because of your little fit of laughter, Eddie looked even more pissed at Richie and made a gesture of complete frustration, inhaling a deep breath to calm himself and not yell at his friend. “Have you ever heard of a staph infection?”

“I'll show you a "staff" infection”, he replied, pointing a stick at Eddie in a warning sign as Stan rolled his eyes at Richie's immaturity.

 _Oh, I want to see this..._ , you thought with a somewhat evil smile as you saw Richie's plan in action. While Eddie talked about how the place was so unsanitary and was like swimming in a toilet bowl, Richie took advantage of his distraction to search for something in the sewage. And quickly found it. A kind of blue plastic cloth, which he picked up with the tip of his wooden stick; he smiled and winked at you before tossing that wet plastic in the direction of the tunnel mouth. Precisely, in the direction of the various cane roots that grew partially covering the entrance and were close to Eddie and Stan.

When the object collided with these roots and fell into the dirty water, splashing everywhere, there were different reactions: Stan wrinkled his forehead and nose in an expression of displeasure, while Eddie jumped with a shout, which soon happened to be a complaint to Richie. “Are you retarded?! You're the reason we're in this situation!”

The following may have been a very good and interesting fight to watch (an absurd type of discussion that had been going on between the two of them since, well, always), but Bill intervened with his call that echoed in the tunnel. You, like the other boys, looked at Bill and it was then that you noticed what he had in his left hand, under the light of his flashlight. A white sneaker of the size of a child. _That's not Georgie's_ , you said to yourself in some comfort, but the others didn't know that. Practically, you could see and feel how their gazes on said object were expectant with some fear.

“Shit. Don't tell me that's...” Stan began, swallowing heavily.

“No. Ge-Georgie was wearing galoshes”, Bill clarified immediately and to everyone's relief, including you, even if you already knew. A confirmation of that did you no harm.

“Who's sneaker is it?” Eddie asked cautiously.

You walked towards Bill until you were at his side and, with your flashlight, you lit the inside of the sneaker that he had in his hand. There it was, in large and written with black permanent marker, someone's name. Richie answered for you to Eddie. “It's Betty Ripsom’s”.

Eddie was instantly horrified. “Shit! Shit, oh god, oh fuck I don't like this”.

“I agree with Eddie, I don't like this either”, you openly confessed your discomfort; if one of the missing Betty Ripsom's sneakers was there, it was equally likely to find the other missing sneaker… and even find her, her dead body, too. The simple idea made you shiver.

“Don't flinch now, ____. You are my research partner”, Richie said. “How do you think Betty feels... going around these tunnels with only one fucking shoe”, he did a few leaps in an attempt to make you laugh, but you didn't. The others didn’t laugh either. He soon realized that everyone was looking at him with serious and leisurely expressions —Bill being the most severe of them all— and then he gave up on his previous comment by standing still and without laughing. It had already become clear that he had crossed the line.

“What if she's still here”, Stan questioned after a few awkward seconds of silence.

Eddie looked at Richie, he looked at you and you at Bill. It was a brief connection of glances until Bill was the first to break it when he returned with his mission to go deeper into the sewer. “I don't care”, that was what Bill implied, and you didn't know if you agreed with him or not. Yes, you wanted to find Georgie, but what if you found Betty Ripsom too? What were you going to do next? To break into tears? To scream? Were you really mentally prepared to see something like that? See not only the possible corpse of your best friend's younger brother, but also the corpse of a schoolmate?

 _No I'm not. And I never will be_ , you thought to yourself as you started to walk behind Bill, slowly following in silence. _But if I'm here it's because of Bill, because I promised him. It’s the least I can do for him._

Richie was also not far behind in deciding what to do. He wasn't too far from you when he yelled, “Eddie, come on!”

“My mom will have an aneurysm if she finds out we were playing down here. I'm serious”, Eddie replied before looking at Bill with pleading eyes, “Bill?”

Bill stopped walking to turn to his friend and said: “If-If I were Betty Ripsom, I whu-whu-would want us to f-f-find me. Ge-Georgie too”.

Eddie still didn't seem very convinced. “What if I don't want to find them? I mean, no offense, Bill, but I do not want to end up like...” The hurt expression in Bill's blue eyes made him retract, he couldn't say that name without hurting him. “I don't want to go missing either”.

“He has a point”, Stan stated almost immediately.

“You too?” Bill asked in a voice close to disapproval.

“It's summer... We're supposed to be having fun. This isn't funny”, Stan confessed as Bill looked at Richie to hear his opinion as well, but he just shrugged. “This is scary and disgusting. Just look at ____”, and with that, the eyes of all the Losers turned to you and you couldn't help but feel a little nervous, fiddling with your fingers to distract yourself from the eyes of Bill and the others. “Do you really think she wants to be in a place like this? Have you asked her how she feels?”

Stan's words harbor the absolute truth, Bill knew he couldn’t even deny or contradict him. Practically, he forced you to come and had no consideration of what you thought about it, nor did he have with his friends. Bill was so focused on himself, he didn't take into account the feelings of others with all of this, and now, he felt like a total idiot, like a real jerk for not having noticed before. He was already thinking of saying an apology when a loud splash made everyone jump.

Eddie and Stan turned quickly to see what or who made that noise while Bill, Richie and you came out of the tunnel to observe too. There, in the middle of a small stretch of the Kenduskeag that ran in front of the culvert, was Ben Hanscom. His clothes were wet and grubby, his sweater covered in dirt and scratches as well as his pants. His hair was all messy and dirty like his clothes, so was his sweaty skin and some bruises adorning his face. A trickle of blood poured from his nose as he tried to get up but wasn’t strong enough to do so, falling back into the waters of the Kenduskeag and splashing jets around him.

“Holy shit, what happened to you?” Richie asked Ben as you, Eddie and Stan went to him to help him up.

With both Eddie and Stan holding up his arms and you inspecting his wounds (especially the one under his sweater, on his belly, in the shape of a bloody H), Ben answered Richie's question in one word. “Bowers”.

Needless to say, the mere mention of that last name was more than enough to get everyone going. Bill and Richie, who were at the entrance to the sewer, looked at each other before running to the bikes, lifting them off the ground and getting on them quickly. Then followed Eddie and Stan, who first guided Ben to Silver, Bill's big bike, to get on it too but in the back of the seat, sitting behind Bill. And lastly you were left with Lefty and Righty, placing them on both feet at an almost frantic pace. In less than two minutes you were ready, without the need to adjust them or anything and with the sneakers soaked in gray water in your backpack.

“Time to go, guys”, you said and the others nodded, all leaving that place together before Henry or anyone else of his gang found you and your friends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> T-T Why I can't skate like that in real life? Is it because my sense of balance is somehow lousy? Yeah, I can ride a bike like a normal person, but when I wear skates I'm an epic fail XD. 
> 
> Well, see ya again soon~


	6. New Kid

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben was the new kid in Derry, everyone knew that. But being new didn't mean being ignored, and it was the Losers Club's duty to help him when he needed a helping hand. After all, he was your friend too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More or less the inmediate continuation of the previous chapter, but with some minor changes here and there. Nothing great. So yeah, that's it *laziness still lurking around at this point*. Oh, and one more thing: not ALL the adults in Derry are that bad... I'm just saying (and based on the book). You'll see what I'm talking about.

The panic and tension were palpable in the surrounding environment as you and your friends walked along a long path, between tall and leafy trees, ending at Center Street. Ben let out a slight squeal of pain every time Bill's bike passed over small rocks, making it shiver, and the wound in his belly kept bleeding. Just by looking at it, you pressed your lips into a fine line and your face contracted in concern. The other boys were also quite concerned about the situation, and of course Eddie's incessant and babbling babble wasn't helping at all as all of you crossed a street that ended up in an alley near Norbert Keene's drugstore.

“I think it's great that we're helping the new kid but we also need to think about our own safety. I mean, he's bleeding all over and you guys know there's an AIDS epidemic happening right now as we speak I mean my mom's friend in New York City got it just by touching a dirty pole in the subway and she got AIDS blood into her system through a hangnail, a hangnail! And they can amputate legs and arms. But how do you amputate waist? You know that there are alleys full of AIDS infected needles, right? You know that”.

“Yes, yes, yes, Eddie, we already know. Please just stop talking about that, because you make me nervous with all the AIDS and blood. Enough we have with Ben here”, you said in a growl close to frustration that was more than enough to silence Eddie, though he continued to show his nervousness in the form of a half-heaved breath.

“We’re so dead”, Stan sighed under his breath as he looked at Ben before getting off his bike, as did the others, and left it parked with its kickstand on the ground. After that, he addressed his word to Bill. “What's the plan?”

You and Bill were helping Ben to sit down on a wooden box, which might be serving as a bench for the moment, when Stan asked the question. Once Ben seemed comfortable enough on the box and unlikely to hurt himself, Bill turned to Stan and quickly glanced around the boys until he stopped at Richie, making a movement with his right hand. “Ri-Richie, wait here. The rest come on”.

Everyone nod to what was said. As Bill, Eddie, Stan and you ran to the edge of the alley, Richie leaned against the brick wall behind him to stay with Ben, who kept his eyes down and his fingers groping his shirt in an attempt to inspect his wound. Before leaving the alley completely and going with the other boys to the intersection where the drugstore was located, you stopped running for a moment, you turned your eyes towards Richie and Ben to shout: “It won’t take long but I still want you to take good care of him, Richie. Remember he’s my friend!”

“Glad I got to meet him before he died!" Richie exclaimed in response as you resumed your pace to catch up with Bill and the others, who had already reached the entrance to the drugstore and were entering it. You didn't take long to get in too.

Eddie was now at the head of the group, guiding you and the other boys through the shelves that had all kinds of materials and products related to the care, hygiene and health of the body, mainly. It didn't seem strange to any of those who were there that Eddie knew this place as well as if it were the palm of his own hand, because, with all the asthma inhaler and the medications for the other alleged conditions he suffered from, Mr. Keene's drugstore had become a second home for him (and Derry Municipal Hospital, a third one). So, while Eddie grabbed with amazing skill a box of non-stick compresses, a bag of cotton, a pack of bandaged gauze, and 70% alcohol, Stan counted the money he had collected between you, Bill and himself.

“C-can we afford all that?” Bill asked with an unsure air.

“It's all we got”, Stan said, exposing the amount of money in his hand to everyone present. In other words: “No, my friends, we don't have enough money to pay for all the items”.

Eddie's eyes were incredulous. “You kidding me?”

The four of you were looking at each other in search of a possible solution to the problem, although no one seemed to come up with anything and still didn’t know what to do now. You cursed in a soundless lip movement as you remembered that in the morning instead of putting knickknacks in your backpack, you could have put more money in it. You weren’t a clairvoyant or anything like that to know that something like this would happen, but you should still have assumed that carrying a decent amount of coins with you didn’t do you any harm and that even from more than one trouble, like this, you could free yourself. You already knew for the next one.

It seemed like everyone was going to stay at the same standstill until an idea suddenly crossed your mind as you peered closely at Eddie and the things he was carrying in his arms, and you smirked at the thought of it. Bill also came up with the same idea after a few seconds, but you got ahead of him when it came to talking to Eddie. “Wait, you have an account here don't you?”

Eddie caught your hint instantly, and from the expression on his face, he didn't like it at all. He shook his head slightly before answering you. “If my mom finds out I bought all this stuff for myself, I'll spend the whole rest of the week in the emergency room. I don't want that and you know it, ____”.

You were about to say something when the quick presence of someone behind you interrupted you, causing the boys to look at the person and you turned to see them too. It was Beverly and in her right hand she carried a small transparent plastic bag that inside seemed to contain a package of sanitary pads, which she sheepishly hid behind her back after a few seconds. Everyone was staring at her in shocked perplexity, no one was saying or doing anything, and the surrounding silence was becoming quite uncomfortable, even to you. Luckily, the whole situation returned to normal when Eddie slipped one of the items he was holding in his arms and the sound of falling against one of the tiles on the floor, making Bill react.

“You okay?” He asked, noticing the confused expression on her face.

“I'm fine”, she stated, directing her gaze to Eddie as he gathered up what had been on the floor. He seemed perfectly fine, but he carried too many healing items with him, and that was strange to Beverly, “what's wrong with you?”

“None of your business”, Stan cut in sharply.

“Stan, don't be rude to her. She’s just curious”, you said with a slight scolding tone that made Stan almost immediately apologize in a breath, bringing you out a satisfied smile. You turned back to Beverly, “I hope you can forgive him, Bev. He isn’t normally like that”.

“Don’t worry, there’s no problem”, she smiled at you momentarily before continuing, “it wasn't my intention to butt in but I couldn't help but see all those things your friend is carrying and wonder if any of you were hurt”.

Whatever doubts, tension or mistrust there was towards Beverly, gradually faded among the boys upon hearing a genuine tone of concern in her voice and Eddie was the first to openly confess. “New kid outside looks like someone killed him”.

Then Bill continued, speaking in Stan's place noting that his friend preferred to keep quiet for the moment. Bill guessed that Stan was keeping quiet to avoid saying anything else curt in front of Beverly because she, after all, was your friend just like them and it was pretty obvious how much you liked her. “We need s-s-some s-s-supplies b-b-but we don't have enough money”.

"Better said, we don't have enough money to pay for everything that is essential to properly care for the boy”, you said to complement and end Bill's explanation.

Beverly looked at you and then at the boys with some regret. “I get it. I really wanted to help you but I don't have much money either and the little I brought was to buy... something I need”.

 _Yes, you need to buy sanitary pads because your first period has come. Congratulations. But saying that to the boys would be absurd, they wouldn't understand, and it would be even more awkward trying to explain. Girls stuff_ , you thought to yourself as you approached her and placed a sympathetic hand on her shoulder, smiling sideways as you sneaked a glance at the pack of sanitary pads that she kept hidden from the view of the others. “Thanks for trying to help us, Bev, but don't worry. We can think of something to solve this mess, right?”

But after a while, no good idea came up between them. Stan's suggestion to use Beverly as a distraction as the rest sneaked out of the drugstore with the unpaid items didn't count either. Stealing Norbert Keene? Not in a million of years. Stealing something from someone was bad, improper and illegal, and that wasn’t among your options, it never would be. There simply should be a less criminal way to solve the problem.

“I have an idea!” You suddenly exclaimed when your stepfather's face flashed through your mind and you remembered something, which wasn’t a great thing but it could be very useful to end the dilemma that had everyone breaking their heads. You looked at Eddie and extended your arms towards him. “Give me the items, Eddie. I know what I have to do”.

Eddie nodded at your request, passing each of the items in his arms to yours. Once you had them all with you, Eddie's brown eyes glimpsed you with a certain touch of curiosity at the same time that he asked you a question. “What’re you thinking to do, ____?”

“You’ll see”, it was all you said to him before you turned on your own axis and walked towards the counter where Mr. Keene was groping around with the cash register. The others, meanwhile, watched in silence as you approached the pharmacist and placed all the products on his counter for him to inspect. His glasses reflected some of the white light that came from the long spotlights on the ceiling. “Good morning, Mr. Keene. How are today?”

“There are good days, there are bad days. I guess this is one of those bad days, this summer heat has me quite suffocated. I don't know how young people can go out with that tremendous sun on them. Skin cancer is what they are going to get”, he replied in a harsh and tough tone that, for a moment, made you believe that you had made him angry at your question. But, as the seconds passed, you noticed how a small and trembling smile appeared on his lips as he marked the prices of the items you had brought him on the cash register. “But I appreciate the question, I'm glad to know that at least someone like you is still courteous to this old man. Today's children only come to buy their things and leave. Sometimes they don't even say hello”.

You smiled sheepishly at the compliment; Mr. Keene was always so direct and painfully honest when it came to talking face to face with his clients. He wasn’t the most charismatic or cheerful man in all of Derry, but, compared to other adults, you considered him to be a good man who had enough principles to carry on a civilized conversation —and even pleasant, if he wanted to— with anyone, whether adult, adolescent or child. He was even lavishly cordial with those he called “vandals good for nothing” who only went to his drugstore to give him unnecessary headaches.

“Okay, little girl, this is the full price”, he said when he finished adding the values of all the products and showed you the final quantity. Now you had a better understanding of Eddie's reaction to learning how little money Stan had collected; the total price wasn’t expensive at all, but the lack of several silver coins to get to pay that price, it was somewhat insulting.

 _After this whole Ben thing is sorted out, I'm going to have a long and intense talk with the guys about putting more money in their pockets to avoid future unforeseen events like this. Because I don't want something like this to happen again_ , you thought with conviction before looking at Mr. Keene, smiling politely and asking him in an innocent voice: “Can I pay with my stepfather's account? You know him, a tall blue-eyed man with a beard and...”

“…Argentinian accent. Yes, I know him. Andy is a regular customer of my establishment and he always has his account balance up to date”, he stated, “so yes, of course you can pay with his account. But the real question is, does your stepfather know you're going to buy all of this?”

“Yes, he does”, you said immediately. Adding yet another lie to your list of white lies wouldn't hurt anyone, what you were doing was for the greater good. That was good, wasn't it?

“Hm. Okay, I'm going to transfer the payment to your stepfather's account. And from what I see, I'm going to have to find a bigger bag in the back room. The bags I have on the counter are very small for so many things and I doubt very much that you want to carry all that in your hands. More chances of you dropping something on the way. Wait here a moment”.

Mr. Keene walked to the back door, opened it, and disappeared behind it. Instantly, you released a breath you didn't know you were holding and turned to see your friends, who were still standing not far from you. Eddie and Stan were discussing something between the two of them, you couldn't quite hear what the conversation was about, but you had a slight suspicion that the topic was somehow related to you. It was just a hunch, maybe you would ask them later and you would know if you were right or not. On the other side were Bill and Beverly, Bill completely silent and leaning on one of the shelves near him, while Beverly remained static in her position —her purchase still hidden in the small of her back— and a hand playing nervously with the tip of her hair arranged in a ponytail. Both quickly noticed your gaze on them and each responded in their own way: Bill with a loving smile and Beverly winking funny at you.

“You're doing well”, was what they both told you with those gestures, and your heart couldn't help but jump with happiness over it, smiling unconsciously until a click sound woke you up from the momentary trance. You turned to the source of the sound and noted that it was Mr. Keene who had returned from the back room with the bag he promised you and was closing the back door before walking to his post at the counter. When he got to it, Mr. Keene immediately started to put each of the products you bought in the plastic bag while he gave you an odd look but said nothing about it and neither did you. The quiet silence was present until he put all the items in the bag and diligently handed it to you.

“Here is, it was a pleasure to assist you, “he said before continuing, “because I must admit that not every day I meet young people as nice as you. So I wouldn't mind if you stopped here more often. You know, to buy sweets, smoothies and all those things that young people like. Who knows, I might even give you a discount one day”.

“Oh, are you serious, Mr. Keene?” You asked with bright eyes of expectation.

“Of course, I'm not lying. I am of the philosophy that good children should be rewarded for good behavior”, he explained calmly. “But enough of this chatter or you're going to stay here all day. Those children over there are waiting for you”.

“Sure. Thanks for everything, Mr. Keene. I hope you have a good day”, you said by making a small parting bow (which seemed to amuse the pharmacist, because he chuckled for more than a fraction of a second), before going back to your friends and showing them what you successfully accomplished and then giving it to Eddie. “Everything is there, guys. We can go back to Ben and Richie”.

Everyone nodded at what you said, Eddie being the first to run out of the drugstore, then being followed by Stan. Bill stood on the doorstep for a few seconds, looking alternately between you and Beverly and trying to say something, but in the end he gave up on what he was going to say when he left the drugstore too. You turned to Beverly and it was then that you noticed that she was still there, completely still and with no apparent intention of moving, although now she dared to reveal more her small shopping bag that she had been hiding for a long time. It was quite evident the relief that Beverly felt that none of the boys were there anymore, just you and her (and Mr. Keene, but he was an adult who was involved in his own affairs). Unlike the boys, you weren't going to ask her about the mysterious package she had bought, and she didn't have to explain what it was and what it was for. What a relief that both of you were girls and there was no need to talk awkwardly about it.

“Are you okay, Bev? Don't you want to come with us?”

Your questions brought Beverly completely out of her thoughts, causing her to look at you. You are always aware of her, always worrying about her, always being her friend. What did she do to deserve someone like you? Beverly smiled tenderly at you. “Yes, I'm OK. I just remembered that I had to ask Mr. Keene for something from my father. You go ahead, I'll catch up with you later”.

“I’ll take your word for granted. Just try not to take too long, okay? Or else I'm going to worry and then I'll get mad because you lied to me”, you said in a warning tone that ended up sounding more like a bad attempt of a threat that would make anyone laugh.

“I think so”, she said, giggling as she reached out to grab your little finger on hers. “And for the peace of your mind, I promise I won't take long. Are you satisfied now?”

“Pretty yes, thanks”, you replied, giving her a short hug before you shot towards the door of the drugstore to open it and go outside. You carefully crossed the intersection, watching for the movement of any car, and quickly entered the alley where the Losers were surrounding Ben. You stayed between Bill and Stan when you entered the circle and one of them, but you didn’t know who and honestly you didn’t care, placed his hand on your shoulder as a sign of support or comfort while you watched with some concern as Eddie, kneeling in front of Ben, was trying to help him as best as he could.

“Just suck the wound”, Richie ordered for the hundredth time.

“I need to focus right now”, Eddie replied with growing annoyance as he kept hearing the same thing over and over again.

“You need to focus?” Richie asked back.

“Yeah, can you go get me something?” Eddie said as he carefully removed the non-stick pad he had placed on Ben's wound, since it was already soaked with blood and had to be replaced with a new one.

“Jesus. Oh, what do you need?” Richie looked at him closely.

“Go get my bifocals, they're in my second fanny pack”, Eddie explained, referring to the fanny pack on his lower back.

“Why do you have two fanny pack?” Stan suddenly interjected with that question and jumping his gaze between both belts that Eddie was wearing: one in a normal position and the other in the opposite direction.

“I need to focus right now”, Eddie demanded to Richie, and with Richie muttering under his breath before handing him the bifocals, then moving on to answering Stan in a whisper, “it's a long story”.

As much as you wanted to see the whole medical procedure done by Eddie, you couldn't bear to see Ben suffering. Maybe the others didn’t notice it, but you saw perfectly how Ben tried to repress the pain he felt when pressing his lips so that no whimper came out of him. That simple action was more than enough to add more guilt to your tormented conscience, making you look away in pity for him and shame on yourself. If you had warned him about Bowers' gang, the thugs wouldn’t have caught him and Henry Bowers wouldn’t have cut him, but you didn’t and in front of you was the consequence of your actions. Now you felt like the worst person in the world, how could you allow all those things to happen in the first place? What kind of friend were you that could have avoided this disgrace to Ben? Were you really such a bad person? Was that why you didn't help Georgie when he needed you most?

Among so many bad and pessimistic thoughts that overflowed the surroundings of your mind, you even wanted to start sobbing as you slowly sank into all that guilt, negativity and pressure you felt in your chest. Letting off some cry wouldn't be bad, there were your friends and they would surely understand your feelings: they would give you a group hug while each of them would say, in their own way, those beautiful phrases that anyone would use to comfort a friend when they cry. However, you didn't start to sob, nor did you let all that tumult of thoughts and emotions overflow from your control. Yes, you still felt very bad about it, but you told yourself that you had to be strong, or at least pretend to be, for Ben. You couldn't cause him and the Losers more trouble, you had already done more than enough.

You removed the hand that was on your shoulder and walked to the edge of the alley; you needed to clear your mind with some fresh air. Knowing Bill, maybe he wanted to go with you and ask you if you were okay. Richie or Stan must have stopped him because, when you reached the outer edge of the alley, Bill was still with the rest of the boys but his worried gaze was on you. You smiled to imply that everything was fine.

 _He never stops being so nice and attentive to me_ , you thought cheerfully as you took some of those deep breaths you so badly needed to regain your inner peace. And it was in one of those breaths that you saw her then; your breathing hitched for a few seconds before returning to normal. Beverly was walking down the sidewalk. The sun lit her entire being as if she were an angel, her fire-red hair fluttered softly to the beat of the breeze and the freckles that adorned her face made her look even more beautiful. You were completely and absolutely sure that if you had been born as a boy, you would have already fallen at Beverly's feet and right now you would be seeing her hypnotic blue eyes like a slimy lover.

“You came after all”, you said with a smile the moment she reached where you were and stopped in front of you.

“I promised you, didn't I?” Beverly winked at you and smirked when she showed you quickly, so that only you could see it, the pack of Emperor Cigarettes she had in her right hand.

 _Oh, of course. That's why you stayed a while longer_ , you said mentally and knowing perfectly well that those cigarettes weren’t for her father, but for her. The old trick that what you were buying was for your father or mother, a classic used regularly by Beverly, Richie, and many other children you knew. You were going to mention something about it, but Stan's voice cut you off instantly. From the inside of the alley, his tone of voice was a little higher than normal and he sounded extremely nervous, worried, that could even consider as frightened and paranoid, when speaking.

“Oh god, he's bleeding”, he said.

On the second, Eddie's voice was heard as well, though it was calmer compared to Stan's. “You have to relax, Stanley”.

“Ben from Soc?” Beverly said as she looked into the alley and noticed someone in particular; Ben sitting on a makeshift bench and being accompanied/cared for by the boys she had seen at the drugstore and one more. She gave you a short glance before heading into the alley, the glance was a silent message to you, and you followed her without a problem.

“You have to suck the wound before you apply the bandage. It's basic”, Richie said to Eddie as he adjusted his glasses.

“You don’t know what you're talking about?” Eddie emphasized to Richie, then his confused gaze fell on Ben. Eddie didn't understand why Ben suddenly pulled his shirt down to hide his belly, or at least it was until he decided to look up and see you and Beverly walking towards them.

“Are you okay? That looks like it hurts”, Beverly said, looking at Ben more closely.

“No, I'm good. I just fell”, Ben said as if it wasn't a big deal.

“Yeah, right into Henry Bowers”, Richie clarified quickly to Bill's obvious disgust, who called out to him, “Shut it, R-R-Richie”. Richie answered almost immediately. “Why? It's the truth”.

“We already know that it’s true, only that isn’t necessary to deepen on the subject”, you said subtly to Richie while you glare at him and threw daggers with it so that he understood that it was better to close his mouth; the least everyone needed at that time was that there was tension in the group environment.

And maybe Beverly caught your hint, too, maybe not, but she changed the topic of the conversation by flirtatiously smirking at Ben, making him blush slightly, and ask openly to him a question. “You sure they got “The Right Stuff” to fix you up?”

With that question, it was then Bill's turn to intervene, smiling gently at her as he answered for Ben. “Yuh-yuh-you know we'll take care of him. Thanks again, Beverly”.

“Sure, maybe I'll see you around”, she said, looking at him with pleasure.

“Yeah, we were maybe thinking about go-going to the q-q-q-quarry tomorrow, if you wanna... Come?” Bill said invitingly at Richie's surprised look, which alternated his curious eyes between the interesting interaction between Bill and Beverly and your apparent calm about it.

“Good to know. Thanks”, Beverly said before waving goodbyes to everyone and walking out of the alley.

When Beverly came out of the alley completely and was out of sight, Eddie got up from the floor, wiping his hands clean, while Stan turned his gaze to Richie. From what you could tell from his facial expression, Stan was somewhat annoyed. “Nice going, bringing up Bowers in front of her”.

Eddie sided with Stan when he also made a similar comment to Richie himself. “Yeah, did you hear what she did?”

“What'd she do?” Ben asked innocently as he looked at Eddie and Richie.

“More what could she do...” Richie replied, touching a specific area of his pants, just above his crotch, and laughing slightly, “I heard that the list is longer than my wang”.

“That's not saying much”, Stan said instantly as he patted you on the back quickly as he noticed that your face was slightly contorted in disgust at what Richie had done previously.

“They're j-j-just rumors”, Bill added before addressing you to confirm it. “Right, ____? Those are j-j-just rumors made by so-so-someone”.

“Yeah, and that someone's name is Greta Bowie”, you confessed as the eyes of all the boys were on you, although the most attentive was Ben's. “So, guys, don't believe everything you hear at school. The vast majority are gossip and rumors created by Greta to screw other people's lives”.

“Anyway, Bill had her back in third grade. They kissed in the school play. The reviews said that you can't fake that kind of passion”, Richie said as additional information to Ben as Stan watched Bill amusingly, making him smirk for a second before resuming his original expression. Richie continued speaking, although he changed the accent in his voice and also put the focus of attention on Ben. “Now, pip pip and tally-ho my good fellows, I do believe this chap requires our utmost attention. Now get in there Dr. K and fix him up!”

Richie gently pushed Eddie back down to crouch in front of ‘his patient’ and Eddie, who immediately set out to recheck Ben's wound, didn't hesitate to reproach Richie for the comment above. “Why don't you shut the fuck up, Einstein, because I know what I'm doing and I don't want you doing the British guy”.

“Suck the wound. Get in there”, Richie replied in response.

And while the others were absorbed in what Eddie was doing, you glimpsed your surroundings nervously for a few moments before lowering your gaze and fixing it on Eddie too. You didn't know how or why, but you had this terrible feeling that you were being watched, as if someone was watching you closely. You and your friends were the only ones in that alley, no one else was here. Although that strange shiver that ran through your spinal cord and made your skin crawl in response, it told you otherwise. You must have been hallucinating or imagining strange things, because you refused to believe that someone else was really present there, it was impossible for that person to be there.

No matter how hard you tried or pretended to focus your eyes on Eddie and the rest of the boys, out of the corner of your eye you could see it clearly: a clown painted on the alley wall, grinning at you. The clown of your nightmares, the same clown who appeared before you the day Georgie disappeared and continued to do so every night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading and see ya again the next sunday, because the real fun is just starting~


	7. Dream of Death

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "They've promised that dreams can come true, but forgot to mention that nightmares are dreams, too". -Oscar Wilde

“I hear you, tits”.

You heard Patrick Hockstetter's voice in the dark; you were back in that dark and smelly sewer tunnel. His shoes made a slimy, wet noise as he walked through all that accumulation of garbage that floated, stagnant, in the sewage from that sewer. Your sneakers, unlike Patrick's, didn't make any sound at all, nor did they appear to be getting wet as you walked around as well. The water rose by capillary flow through Patrick's pants, soaking everything below the knee and above it partially wet. But the capillarity of the water wasn’t affecting your own pants at all, it was completely dry to your touch, its fabric intact and unalterable under your fingertips. Patrick's shoes sank in the sewage, yours too; consequently, his pants touched the surface of the waters, yours too. So why was his clothes soaked in that liquid disgusting, but not yours?

A flare of fire suddenly occurred from Patrick's hands, a momentary illumination and a sensation of heat in the room. It all came from a dangerous combination between the lighter he always carried with him (religiously using it to light the cigarettes that Bowers' gang members, except Victor, frequently smoked after school time), and a can spray that he used as a flammable fuel to do the blasting explosive trick. Another flare came later, and although you took advantage of the brief light to get a better look at Patrick and then yourself —he was effectively wet and dirty while you seemed impermeable to gray water— you still didn't believe what you were feeling and seeing was real. How was such a thing possible? Well, it wasn't, you must be dreaming or something like that. It was the only logical explanation; it had to be another of your dreams. But why were you dreaming about Patrick?

Patrick soon found another tunnel to the left and headed inside; you followed him without hesitation. If it was all just a dream, you had no choice but to go along with the dream until it ended or you woke up, whichever came first. The situation was that simple. A third flare arose and Patrick spoke. “Don't think you can stay down here all damn day”.

You knew beforehand that he wasn’t referring to you, but to someone else, although at the moment you couldn’t remember that other person's name. Patrick didn't seem to be aware of your presence there, you were like a ghost to him, a type of invisible companion. He couldn't see you, even though you were practically walking beside him, and you started to suppose that he couldn't hear you either, so you didn't try to do it; you would be a simple spectator of events. Both of you continued walking for a while until Patrick stopped dead in his tracks and you stared at him in confusion. Why did he stop? The darkness allowed you to see almost nothing and what little you saw was more and more garbage in the sewer, nothing more. There were no real reasons to stop, or at least you thought until you started hearing voices. Patrick was listening to them too.

“You found us, Patrick... You found us, Patrick...” The voices said over and over, repeating the same phrase as if it were the chorus of a song, and increasing the volume of their tones, going from slight whispers to loud exclamations that resounded around the tunnel. “You found us, Patrick!”

Little silhouettes appeared in the dark, these silhouettes seemed to be of children, but you couldn't see anything more than that. Neither colors nor expressions, only the heights of the dark silhouettes. Patrick lifted the spray can to the lighter nozzle, pressing the button, and flared again. What he and you saw left both of you paralyzed; the fear and terror that both felt for those few seconds that the flare lasted. The silhouettes were indeed of children, but their appearances were terrifying and appalling to look at. They looked like zombies: pale skin, totally gaunt and covered with bleeding wounds; slimy, cloudy eyes, devoid of color and soul; tattered clothes in dirt, rot and blood. One of the children, who was a girl with black hair, showed her teeth with a macabre smile, all of them turned into rows of thick fangs made to cut meat. Patrick's meat.

Patrick let out the spray can with a yell, the blaze of fire immediately ceased, and it was all in complete darkness again. However, neither the darkness nor the lack of his favorite lighter —that when he tried to use it, ended up slipping from his trembling hands in fear—, prevented Patrick from running out of there, as if his life depended on it and, in a certain way, it was. You didn’t hesitate for a moment to follow him, you also running away from those zombified children or whatever they were; you didn't know if they could see you or you were equally invisible to them, but you didn't want to find out. The only thing you could think of was running away, your mind screaming at you to run away from that place along with Patrick, because that place it wasn't safe for either of you to stay longer.

When both of you got out of that sub-tunnel and kept running through the main tunnel of the culvert to get to the culvert exit, Patrick, awkwardly, stumbled over some debris that was on the way. You saw how he was rapidly losing his balance on his own legs, stumbling in his running before falling, face first, into the sewage. He recovered from the fall after a few seconds; his legs trembled, they seemed to be made of jelly, while he straightened up as best he could and then kept running. Patrick was completely drenched, but that didn't matter to him, he just desperately wanted to find the way out. The culvert had become a kind of infinite tunnel or maze, because the culvert mouth was nowhere to be seen.

Or so it was, until Patrick noticed a small trace of light. It was faint and almost imperceptible in so much darkness, but he didn’t hesitate to go in that direction, clinging to the idea that he was finally near the culvert outlet; you followed him up with a pretty similar idea on your mind. However, your hope was immediately shattered when both reached the spot where the dim light came from: a barred manhole.

“Fuck!” Patrick exclaimed, gripping some of the bars tightly in a vain attempt to break them; the children's voices were heard again and getting closer.

You could also hear them approaching, you felt your heart beat erratically in response to the echo of their dark voices singing and your eyes went to Patrick, looking at him more worryingly with each passing second. Patrick was scared, terribly terrified by everything that was happening; the metal rod that he found submerged in the water, and which he quickly grasped with both hands as if it were a baseball bat, didn’t give him a bit of the security that he so badly needed in those crucial moments. The eerie singing voices of the children kept echoing in the place until something appeared in the dark and with that, everything was completely silent. The children's voices were no longer heard in the environment, their macabre songs had been muted. Patrick focused his gaze, you too, on the mysterious object and soon realized that it was a balloon, a beautiful oval red balloon that floated to where both of you were.

As it stood in front of Patrick, just a few inches apart, it was then that its inscription could be read more clearly: I love Derry, before it unexpectedly exploded into a powerful noise. The noise could have been horrible, but the person behind the remains of the balloon was much worse; your eyes widened in complete surprise and terror. It was the clown, the clown in that platinum Victorian costume. His pompons and thread embroideries were as red as his nose, his mouth, and the two painted lines that went beyond his eyes, to almost half of his forehead, made up of white powder like the rest of his face. His bald head had orange streaks and his blue eyes transformed into a bright gold as he watched dangerously at Patrick, grinning grimly the instant he decided to pounce on him. Patrick couldn't even defend himself with the metal stick, it all happened in seconds, the attack was so fast that he could only cry out before falling victim to his attacker.

You didn't want to keep seeing any of it, you didn't want to see another person being ripped to pieces by that damned clown, the clown of your nightmares. He killed them in your dreams, in front of you he devoured each and every one of them; the first had been Georgie, then Cheryl Lamonica followed, then Matthew Clements, Betty Ripsom, Veronica Grogan, and as many other missing children until Patrick. His face, neck, and much of his shirt were alarmingly covered in blood as the clown, with an undetermined number of sharp fangs replacing his human teeth, bit incessantly on his left side and without mercy for him or his pain. Each voracious bite cracked his ribs, drawing howls of agony from Patrick's throat until he could no longer scream at the break in his own bones. The whole scene before you was grotesque, brutal, and completely bloody; you wished you could wake up, you really wished it with all of you, but something prevented you. The clown was preventing you from getting out of that dream of death.

Patrick's suffering, and your anguish to see him dying, only ceased when the clown, with a single but powerful tug, tore his stomach through the hole made in his left side, between his broken and bloody ribs; the light in his eyes faded instantly as did the life in his body, all ending for him. However, for you, things were just beginning. One of the clown's hands surprisingly grabbed your neck, lifting you a few inches in the air, before violently pushing your entire body against the cold, wet cut of the sewer the next second; all the air escaped from your lungs and shining stars danced in your blackened vision.

Your bodily reaction to the consequent trauma must have been funny to the clown, because, in what little you could see with your blackened and blurred vision, you noticed how his wicked smile widened even more when his shiny golden eyes landed on you and your face contracted in an expression of annoyance, confusion and exhaustion. His mouth, its surroundings, and various sections of the ruffle of his suit were stained with the blood of the deceased Patrick Hockstetter; the disgust and the urge you had to vomit were increasing just by looking at the vital crimson liquid dripping down his chin. All of it was a hard evidence, and a cruel reminder, that he had killed Patrick and had eaten his stomach in one bite, that he had enjoyed breaking his bones as Patrick screamed in pain and you watched helplessly. The clown was still having fun, but now it was with you and only you.

“Why so serious, ____? Are you sad about the death of your friend? Well, you shouldn't be! You want to know why?” The clown asked to you like the whole matter were just a game, and that was so for him, a simple game where he was the predator and the others were the prey. Maybe you weren't one of his prey, but even you were still part of his game and you knew that he wouldn't let you go so easily. “Because he is no longer suffering, he will never have to age again! I have done him a favor and you should be happy for him. We should also be happy for the other children, none of them have to wait for eld to come for them. All those children, including your friend, will be children forever. That sounds great, right?”

“No, that doesn't sound great. You are nothing but a monster that takes advantage of children, of their fears. You just kill them for pleasure”, your accusation didn't seem to bother him, for the contrary, it made him laugh with amusement, although his grip on your neck told you otherwise. His gloved fingers pressing more insistently on your windpipe, forcing the air passage into your lungs; you were somewhat afraid that at any moment he would decide to break your neck. “Why are you doing this?”

His eyes were no longer golden and returned to their original color: blue, but his mischievous smile never faded when he asked back. “Do what? What did I do to your friend and the other children or what am I doing to you?”

“Both”, you answered immediately.

“Oh, that's simple, but I'm not going to explain it to you. You already know the answer, you just don't want to accept it. You would rather take refuge in a lie than accept the truth, because you want to forget everything…” His hand tightened even more on your throat when his expression suddenly became deathly serious and his eyes narrowed when he looked at you straight in the eye; the fear and panic building inside you with each passing second as he continued to speak. “However, I am going to change that. Very soon I will make you remember who I am, who you really are and your true purpose of being here”.

“And how... do you… intend to... do something... like that?” You asked the clown raggedly, feeling like you were just about to pass out right there. You couldn't swallow, much less you could breathe, the oxygen wasn't reaching you and the bright stars were dancing again in your increasingly blackened view; you were running out of time.

“You’ll see”, he simply said at the instant he finally released you from his grip, preventing you from passing out because of the suffocation that himself was causing around your neck; your feet were no longer in the air and you fell precipitously down, splashing into the dirty sewer waters at the same time you were frantically breathing for air and coughing hoarsely as a consequence.

It didn't take you a second to bring one of your hands to your neck to gently rub it, in an attempt to mitigate the suitcase you felt; there was a tingling sensation in your throat and it was also somewhat dry, which made you cough even more until your breathing returned to normal. The discomfort in your throat continued, but now it was less and a little more tolerable for you to cope. Your eyesight was already clearing up at this point, the bright stars were fading in your vision as more oxygen reached your brain, and when you felt ready to look up, you did it to stare intently at the clown. His mischievous smile had returned to his bloodstained lips again, as if he was mocking you or your reactions to pain, his eyes were still just as blue and his right arm was extended towards you, indicating that he wanted you to take his gloved hand.

For a long time, you alternated your eyes between the expression on his face and his outstretched hand before deciding to grab his hand, entwining his with yours in a firm handshake. No one could blame you for your mistrust to that clown, you had already seen what he was capable of doing and, although now he showed no interest in hurting you more, you doubted that his intentions with you had changed so quickly. After all, his intentions were always bad. He lifted you up from the sewage with a powerful jerk of his right arm and you stood in front of he when he released you from the handshake, his height being imposing on you but you weren’t completely intimidated. Both of you looked like two beings from two different worlds: he, with part of his face and his suit smeared in blood, the blood of one of his many victims; And you, with your clothes clean and completely dry, even though just a few moments ago you had been sitting among those waters.

“If you already finished torturing me, I ask you to please let me out of here. I can't stand another minute being in this place, so let me wake up”, you said after a period of silence between both.

“Do you really think I'm going to let you wake up?" He asked, not expecting an answer from you because he laughed out loud, echoing in the tunnel the next second. “I don’t think so. No, at least, for now. Maybe I has finished playing with you, but I still have one last thing I must do with your friend and I would love for you to witness it before I let you go”.

“What else are you going to do to him? Can't you see he's dead? Totally dead!” You exclaimed, exalted, and then began to swallow hard when you saw his malicious smile widen. You already sensed what he was going to tell you, he had already told you repeatedly in past dreams, but you still refused to believe it.

“I don't need him to be alive, because in Derry nobody really dies. This town is my home, my hunting area, and while I stay here, all its inhabitants will float...”

And with that, Patrick got up. Instinctively, you stifled a scream and clung to the wall of the sewer tunnel, your heart pounding from the impression you just had as your eyes were held wide open by what you were seeing. There Patrick stood, in the midst of a reddish mixture of dirty water, and with the whole left side of his shirt stained with blood. He was a living dead man, his skin was absolutely pale and his soulless eyes, devoid of emotions, stared into nothing; Patrick wasn’t very different from the other zombified children who had appeared at first, because now he had become one of them. But, at the same time, something else differentiated him from the rest and that something was along his arms and part of his face; that thing was more than one and you were a bit to scream when you observed them carefully.

They were leeches, small black leeches (or so you saw them like this, with the poor lighting that was in the place). They were randomly scattered across Patrick's arms and face, their tiny mouths stuck to his bare skin and sucking up the blood beneath it. The leeches grew larger and thicker as they swallowed more and more blood from him; some were faster than others, although all of them did their job equally: hungrily sucking the vital crimson liquid until they couldn't take it anymore. And when they reached satiety, totally fat and full of blood, they exploded like mini-bombs, leaving traces of blood on his pale skin and where more leeches spontaneously came out to do the same as the previous ones.

The clown looked quite pleased with the scene that was unfolding and your reaction to it, your face contracting in a grimace of disgust, displeasure, denial, and so many things at the same time. However, the clown at no time saw the terror reflected in your eyes, perhaps there was a little fear and unease in them, but never the true and complete horror of witnessing something as repulsive, as disgusting as that. A corpse brought back to life, its clothes torn, bloody and wet with gray water, while its wounded and colorless skin was being devoured by a practically infinite amount of voracious bloodsucking worms. Your almost non-existing fear of what you had in front of you, even if it was just a dream or whatever it was, was more than enough to make the clown look at you in greater interest, feeling ironically ecstatic for his great but nothing new discovery. It was already confirmed, you were going to be quite a challenge for him and he gladly accepted it; the clown licked his bloodstained lips from just thinking about it, about the confrontation that both of you will have. Like old times…

“You're a tough nut to crack, ____. I don’t feel a bit of fear in you, I don’t feel any of that tasty fear that I would like to taste so much on your skin. You really are fascinating. So identical to your brothers and sisters, but also so different from them. I should even give you a reward for it...” You had no idea what that killer clown was talking about. Brothers? Sisters? What was he referring to with that? Lots of questions forming in your head, but you kept your mouth shut as he continued. “You want to get out of here, don't you? Well that's going to be your reward, I'm going to let you go. I've already found what I was looking for and I don't need you… for now”.

Swiftly, the clown walked towards Patrick and had the audacity to grab him by the chin, rotating his head so that he looked at you with those lifeless eyes while using him as a ventriloquism doll, saying goodbye to you with a: “We will see us again soon”.

The next thing you remembered was that you woke up in your own bed. Matt, your turtle plush, was there with you, hugged by your side and being tucked together with you by a light blanket. Intentionally, you became more attached to Matt as you felt the smooth texture of the sheet below you, brushing against the areas of your skin that weren’t covered by your pajamas. After a while, you released a sigh of relief when you understand that you were back, that you were really back in your room. The soft pillow cradled the back of your head and the comfortable mattress on the bed supported the rest of your body, you were on your back and with your gaze towards the ceiling of your bedroom. Most of the room was in complete darkness, only a small and subtle yellowish lamp in the shape of an adorable bear —being lit from your nightstand— made some light in the place. But no more than that; the moon wasn’t peeking out in the window next to your closet, neither were the stars.

 _Everything is too dark to be night. I guess it must be early morning... What time is it?_ You asked yourself while trying to look at the table clock that was near to the teddy bear lamp, but you soon realized that you couldn't move your head. You couldn't move it without your neck hurting in the process, you felt a kind of painful stiffness in your neck every time you tried to turn it, no matter if the movement was minimal or not. _Of course, a damn reminder of that damn clown! Fucking hell, it hurts so freaking much!_

With your eyes slightly watery, you bit your lips to avoid complaining in pain and, using the hand that wasn’t tied to Matt, you gripped the sheet tightly to further decrease the urge to scream. Your parents' bedroom wasn't too far from yours and you honestly didn't want to wake them up for something as trivial as an episode of torticollis (or something like it, because your neck was in its normal position, straight, and not twisted towards one of your shoulders). So you stayed still, completely immobile without moving a single muscle until you started to feel that the pain was easing and disappeared completely after a while. But even with that, you didn't dare stretch or tilt your neck for the rest of the early morning, even out of curiosity. You weren’t going to tempt your own luck, previous experiences told you that if you moved, the pain would return and you didn’t want it back at all, you didn’t miss feeling it. So, you just stayed there, lying on your bed, waiting for the urges to sleep to take over you.

And the above is curious, because when you finally closed your eyes and fell asleep again, this time in a dream without the demonized clown, it was then that a whisper sounded in your room. You didn’t listen to it, even if you had been awake you wouldn’t have had the pleasure of listening to it; the whisper was almost imperceptible to human ear, as if the mysterious presence that said it didn’t want anyone to really listen to it, not even you. The message was quick, concise, and straight to the point.

“Your time has come, Dæmon”.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, all the notes at the end in this one (because I didn't want to share some spoilers at the very beginning). Well, first of all, what do you think about this encounter with Pennywise? Pretty nice, right? Pennywise being an asshole to you and only you~ Aw, can you feel the love tonight? *the author's sleep drepived and saying nosense* But really, like I said in the previous chapter, the real fun is coming and not just with Pennywise or the Losers Club. Something bigger is also coming (mysterious presence maybe?)... And that brings me to the other thing.
> 
> You, as a main character in the plot, are going to have your own adventures and interactions with many characters, not just sticking like a leech (rest in peace, Patrick XD) to the Losers Club and all the things that they do in the movies. No more spoilers here, but yes, this is more than just a rewrite of the movies with you like another character. These seven chapters are somehow an introduction to the things that will be changing little by little through more interesting parts of this story in the future (I really hope so). You'll see what I'm trying to explain soon. 
> 
> And finally, thank you for reading all of this and see ya until I'm alive again~
> 
> Posdata: The "reservation" is over, but the next weekend I'm going to publish a new chapter like always.


	8. Answer the Calling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Something or someone was calling you. You didn't know how or why, but you had to answer. There was no other option.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, the promise is debt. Here is the last weekly chapter, because from now on the updates of this story will be somewhat slow, but there’s nothing to worry about. Even if I don’t publish a new chapter in two weeks, a month or maybe a little more, that doesn’t mean I have abandoned the story or anything like that. No, of course not. If it takes me a long time to publish a chapter, it’s because I am still writing and revising it (because each chapter has two versions, one in Spanish and one in English, and I am also an obsessive paranoid who wants both versions to be as beautiful as possible). But if I said I’m going to publish one day, I will, in the year of the pear but I will. You just have to have some patience with me and everything will be fine, okay? Thank you.
> 
> And now yes, most importantly, I hope you enjoy reading this chapter that I wrote with so much effort and affection, because it took me almost a whole freaking month to do it and I just finished it today (all thanks to my human laziness, the easy I get distracted by anything and my deadly addiction to video games XD).

It was pretty obvious that your neck pain was going to magically reappear when, instinctively, you stretched your entire body out of bed. But was it really necessary for it to be accompanied by fever and headache? You hated having that hot feeling on the surface of your skin, that suffocating rise in the body temperature only made you more pissed off than you already were from the headache. You snorted in frustration at your bad luck, sitting on one of the corners of your bed and not really wanting to get up again the moment you heard your mother calling you from the dining room. You didn't think you were strong enough to go down the stairs and go to breakfast, you couldn't even answer your mother out loud; you felt hot, achy and dizzy, extremely tired as if you hadn't slept at all. So there you stayed, sitting on your bed, trying not to move your head as much as possible and waiting patiently for your mother, or your stepfather, to come to your rescue.

Fortunately, you didn't have to wait long because, within a few minutes, your mother's figure appeared in the doorway of your room, one hand on her hip and the other on the knob of the open door. The instant her motherly eyes fell on you, she immediately knew that something was wrong with you: you were silent —and with no apparent intention to speak or explain what was happening to you—, your shoulders looked too tense, your posture was unusually straight and your whole body was shaking slightly as if you were cold (even though you felt the opposite). From one second to the next, her face contorted in a sign of utter concern and she didn’t hesitate to hurriedly walk towards you to place the back of her left hand on your forehead, confirming her suspicions.

“Yes, you are definitely ill. That explains why you didn't answer me and didn't come down to eat, you have a fairly high fever”, she said, changing the back to the palm of her hand to be doubly sure what she was talking about and then looking at you more closely. “Do you feel something else? Does any part of your body hurt? You know you can tell me, right?”

You thought about lying to her, you really did. You could tell her that you had nothing else other than the intense fever, maybe talk about the neck pain as a product of a bad sleeping position, but never mention the headache. Your mother had already had more than enough with you and your aftermath of the accident, mentioning the headache would only make her worry increase even more than necessary. You didn't want her to continue to worry more than necessary about your physical and mental health. However, you also knew that she, like your mother, should worry about you and take care of you when you aren’t feeling well, and you, as her daughter, shouldn’t refuse her help. Understanding that, it was then that you decided to give up the idea of lying to her face... at least partially.

You swallowed heavily and nodded your head slightly, complaining almost immediately in annoyance at the pain you felt returning to your neck. Like an alarm, your mother's eyes widened in concern and she was about to ask you something, but you stopped her before she did. “Yes, ma, my neck hurts. I think I twisted it a bit while sleeping. My head hurts too, but I guess it's from the fever”.

Your mother was silent for a brief moment, as if she was analyzing what you had just confessed to her, and you became nervous under her gaze; you bit the inside of one of your cheeks. Maybe she already discovered your half-lie, maybe no, you couldn't be sure of anything until she said something about it. “Hm. It's okay. I'm going to prepare a cold water bath for you, it will help you lower that fever and relax your muscles. If the fever goes down, the headache should decrease as well. Is that okay with you?”

You made an approving sound and she smiled softly at your response, bringing her lips to your forehead to place a delicate kiss before she pulled away from you and hurried out of your room to do what she had promised to do. The instant your mother left, you let out a breath that you didn't know you were holding. That was close. You looked at the palms of your hands and noticed that, in addition to being pale, they were beaded with sweat. You didn't have to check the palms of your feet to know that they were equally pale and sweaty. What the hell? First it was the neck pain, then the fever with headache followed, and now this. With good reason you didn’t want to tell the whole truth to your mother, not even you could explain to yourself what your body was experiencing, what you were feeling. Anyone else would say you were just sick, even your mother would eat more or less that story. Yet you knew there was something else behind it, something that you still couldn't fully understand and that was strangely familiar to you.

 _All of this seems to be taken from that book of myths and legends that I read…_ , you said to yourself as you lowered your gaze to observe the rest of your body, which was still subtly shivering before a non-existent sensation of cold. The paleness and sweat on your palms continued as well, _I have a fever, but I am shivering from a cold that I don’t feel. My head is spinning, but I can think clearly and without any problem. My hands and feet sweat like I'm still nervous, but I'm not anymore… It's like my senses are reacting to something they can't really perceive. To someone? No, that's absurd, it can't be possible..._

You were so deep in your own thoughts that you didn't notice the person standing in the doorway of your bedroom until you started hearing a few taps on the wood of the open door. And it was then, that you woke up from the trance and looked up to see who it was. For a split second, you swore to see someone other than Andy, your stepfather, leaning against your doorframe. A man dressed in a dark robe. Just that, you couldn't see him in more detail. When you blinked in the next instant, the mysterious man's presence had been replaced by Andy's. But what…? You frowned momentarily in confusion before focusing your gaze on your stepfather, smiling a little to hide your unease and puzzlement over what happened.

“I'll try to guess. Mom asked you to come get me, right?” You said, knowing beforehand that you had been correct in your assumption.

“Why should I deny it? You know what your mother is like, you know her very well”, he replied, laughing for a moment before continuing with what he was going to say, pulling away from the door frame and walking to the side of your bed where you were sitting, “Clarissa told me that the bath was ready for you, but that she doubted you could go there without any help. And, from what I see, it seems she has a point. You look terrible”.

“Wow, thank you very much. That's what every girl of my age wants to hear from her loving stepfather”, you commented sarcastically and rolling your eyes playfully, your smile turning into a giggle that Andy found hilarious as well, both of you laughing for a few seconds before returning to the main topic. “Well, what is the plan? Use you as a granny cane until you get me to the bathroom?”

Hearing your hint, your stepfather looked at you with amusement and a raised eyebrow. Then, you noticed how a malicious smile appeared on his lips and you felt anxious in response; you already had more or less an idea of what he was going to say, because that smile could only mean one thing. “Better than that. Do you remember those days when you were just an innocent little girl? Well, I'm going to carry you as I did in those days...”

“No, no and no! Absolutely not! Everything but that!” It was quite impressive that, despite all the ailments you were suffering, you still had the minimum volume and enough tone of voice to exclaim in that way, “I don't want you to carry me like a princess!”

However, each and every one of your exclamations was heard by deaf ears, being completely ignored by your stepfather. In less than a minute, he had his arms on you and in position: one around your back while the other was behind the bend of both of your knees, ready to get you out of bed. It was more than obvious to you that your stepfather didn't give a damn about your childish complaints —and your pouty face wasn't having an effect on him either—, so you stopped insisting after a while, reluctantly giving up. You clung to him as he began to lift you up into the air, your arms wrapping quickly around his shoulders to make the process of getting you up easier. You were no longer the same little girl as before, you were no longer the same height and weight as before. Although that didn't seem to bother or trouble him. Even when he felt your fever on the skin he was touching and near his neck, he smiled softly at you as he held you safely in his arms. That simple but loving action made your expression relax and a shy smile return to your lips.

And so, holding you firmly in his arms, Andy walked out of your bedroom and all the way down the hall until he reached the end, where your mother was opening the bathroom door for both of you to enter. As you entered the bathroom, your stepfather went straight to the toilet and carefully lowered you so that you were sitting on its lid, while your mother was checking something in the tub and then looked at your stepfather with a nod of her head. Andy quickly got the message, straightened up on his legs and with his right hand ruffled your hair a bit, smiling mischievously before leaving the bathroom. Now only you and your mother were there.

“Do you want me to help you take off your pajamas?” She asked after a few seconds of silence, looking at you carefully.

“Eh, no. I think I can do it myself and without breaking my neck”, you said instantly, without much thought. You understood that it was natural that parents could behave in certain particular ways with their sick children, but sometimes you felt that your parents forgot that you were 12 years old and not 6. “Don't worry about it, mom”.

“Very good then. If you need something or help with something else, just try yelling. Or break something if you think you can't and I'll come right away”; you agreed to what your mother told you and she smiled, this time giving you a kiss on the cheek before she went to the bathroom door and closed it behind her when she came out into the hall.

Once alone in the bathroom, you sighed and proceeded to undress cautiously, trying not to move too much. Your pajamas were platinum silk and consisted of a button-down shirt and shorts, so it wasn't really going to be too much trouble taking them off, but you still wanted to be careful. The neck pain was on the order of the day and you had no desire to feel it more than necessary; fever, sweating, and headache were keeping you quite company for now. When you no longer had any clothes on you, you finally got up from the toilet bowl and walked with small steps towards the bathtub, looking at it tentatively. The bathtub was almost full of water, cold water, and you could notice several ice cubes floating in it. You reached out and dipped one foot into the tub as a test, only to be instantly pulled out, hissing in annoyance at the sudden, jerky movement. The water was freezing!

You stood still for a minute or less, waiting for the neck pain to subside as you nervously stared into the cold bathtub. Bathing in almost frozen water no longer looked as pleasant as you thought, but you knew you had to do it if you wanted the fever in your body to decrease. So when the neck thing finally settled down completely, you got into the bathtub before you tried to change your mind. You entered one leg first and then the other, feeling again that piercing coldness on your skin, shivering with greater intensity and having strong chills down your back. You bit lightly on the lower lip of your mouth to distract yourself from all those sensations as you got deeper into the tub, slowly descending and soaking your body until only your head was above the water.

You started to get used to the cold after being there for about five minutes, with the tension finally leaving the muscles of your body and the headache gradually fading. The fever was probably subsiding as well, because you no longer felt as hot or overwhelmed as before. You let out a calm exhale and laid the back of your head on the periphery of the tub, closing your eyes for a few seconds and then opening them again when you remembered a tip from your mother. “No matter how relaxing and comfortable it is, you should not fall asleep in a bathtub, ____. It's for your own safety”, that's what she told you a long time ago. But, right now there was nothing to worry about, right? You weren't falling asleep, you just wanted to fully enjoy the coldness of the water, so you closed your eyes again. You were going to keep them closed for just a moment...

...A moment that became an eternity.

“Dæmon, I have been waiting for you”, a mysterious male voice said suddenly on the darkness and echoing in your mind. You have never felt or heard anything like that before: a voice so firm, magnificent, and powerful that it could even reach the deepest corner of your head and resonate with it, dulling your own thoughts. “Do you know where you are? Do you know why you are here?”

 _Yes, I’m in a dream. And I'm here because I fell asleep in the bathtub, just what my mother told me not to do_ , that was the first thing that came to your mind, although you knew that this thought wasn’t entirely correct with reality. Your surroundings had changed, you could feel it in every pore of your skin, and the voice of the mysterious man wasn’t a simple product of your great imagination. A supernatural force prevented you from opening your eyes to confirm your suspicions, no matter how many times you tried in vain, but you were completely and absolutely sure that the masculine presence that was with you was real. It had to be, he had to be the reason you were in that place.

“No. I don't know where I am and I don't really know why”, you said, shaking your head and being surprised that the pain in your neck was now non-existent. “Although I must assume that this is all related to you, isn't it?”

“You are correct, Dæmon”, the man's voice affirmed in your ears and inside your head, as if he was speaking and using telepathy with you at the same time. “Where you are is not very important to you, but the why it is. The reason why you are here is because I have called you and you have responded to my calling. Those symptoms of illness that you have been feeling have been signals, signals of your body reacting to the calling. As it was described in the book of myths and legends that you read...”

For the first time in your life, you were speechless, opening and closing your mouth consecutively in an unsuccessful attempt to respond to what he said. You felt anxiety in your heart while your brain couldn’t process with so much information transforming into an absurd amount of questions: Dæmon? Why did he name you like that? His calling? How have you responded to his calling? Why was your body reacting so negatively to it? What did this man want from you? How did he know about the book? Did he also know about the clown that appeared in your dreams? Would he have the answers to all your questions? Something inside you told you yes. That something said he had each and every one of the answers that you needed to hear so much, you only needed to trust him and what he had planned for you. And you did, when your agitated mind full of thoughts was calming down as the voice of the unknown man sounded again.

“Because everything has a purpose, a destiny that must be fulfilled. You may not understand it very well now, you are still a young being who has a lot to learn, but in time you will. All the questions that plague your mind and instill doubts in you, have their answers that will come to you in due course. So you have nothing to fear, Dæmon”.

His wise words harbored truth and his tone of voice was too magical for you to refuse anything he asked of you; if you were on your feet before, now you were kneeling on what appeared to be sandy dirt and sprinkling dust in whatever you were wearing as clothing. You couldn't resist his will. The ability to speak returned to you when you nodded, accepting his request. “It's okay. This is more confusing than the thousand-piece puzzle I have in home, but I think I can trust you. However, there is one thing I would like to know right now, if it is not too much trouble".

“I know it is going to be interesting to hear. Continue with your question, Dæmon”, he said complacently, as if he already knew well in advance what you were going to ask.

“Why do you call me Dæmon?" What is that? What does it mean?”

There was an instance of silence that made you feel nervous, swallowing heavily as you realized that your breathing —along with your heartbeat— was the only thing you could hear in your ears. Why wasn't he answering you right away? Was he reconsidering something? Or was he thinking of a way to tell you without further complicating your existence? It could be so many different factors, but luckily, you didn't have to break your head in choosing one; a short laugh suddenly rang out on the spot and your mental questions instantly cleared, as did your nervousness. The man's laugh wasn’t mocking or malicious, it was simply a laugh, a momentary laugh at the obviousness of your curiosity before speaking.

“I call you Dæmon because that's what you are, ____ Aubrey. Like your brothers and sisters before you, you are much more than just a human destined to do something. You are a Dæmon and that can mean an infinite number of things…” Explained the man as his voice was increasing in volume, as if he was physically approaching until he was a short distance from you; his presence was in front of you. “But perhaps one of the most important of them all is to be a truth seeker. All of your brothers and sisters were truth seekers, and now your time has come to do the same”.

When he finished saying that, you felt the soft palm of a hand —his hand— on your face, right over your closed eyes, and a pleasant pulse of warmth came from it that made you breathe out calmly in response. The pleasant sensation unfortunately didn’t last long, the man withdrew his hand from your face after a few seconds, taking his warmth with him and something else too. That supernatural force that had been magically keeping your eyes closed all this time had now vanished from your lids like mist, and you could now voluntarily open them again. And you did, blinking a few times to adjust your sight to the light. The light was from the sun, radiant high up in the blue sky and with some white clouds that kept it company; the yellowish sand around you looked more like a shiny golden color. Everything you could see was truly amazing: from the dunes of the immense desert and a beautiful rose that was planted a few millimeters from your feet, to the leather armor that covered your torso and with a hypnotic turtle engraved right on the chest.

However, it was the man in the dark robe who made the biggest impression on you; you rose quickly from the sand and took a few tentative steps back, your eyes wide to the limit as you stared at him in surprise. It was the same man who had appeared at your bedroom door for a fraction of a second! Only now you had more time to see him better: a bald angular head, light skin, imposing height, and jaw with a beard as dark as the robe... But as you observed more and more details in the man, you became aware that the man in front of you couldn’t be quite a human being like you. In his expressionless face there were no eyes or eyebrows with hair follicles, only skin in place, and the strands of hair that made up his long beard moved in various directions, as if they were tentacles and each had a life of its own. The eyeless bearded man was truly amazing and creepy in equal measure, and you no longer knew how you should behave in his powerful presence.

“Are you afraid of me, Dæmon?” He asked after a few moments of silence, tilting his head in possible curiosity or interest when the expression on your face contracted noticeably.

 _No, of course not_ , was the answer you thought in your mind, but you knew that this wasn’t the whole truth you had to give him. Your reasons for starting to fear the strange man were not enough in your brain, so you could freely say that you weren’t afraid of him. However, in your heart it was another story because it was beating extremely fast, as if you were on the verge of an anxiety attack. Was his appearance really that scary to you? No, it wasn't that; the clown from your nightmares was much creepier in comparison. So that bit of fear you were feeling was for something else? Possibly and the man in the dark robe was causing it, although you didn't know how or why he did it. Your body was just reacting to an invisible and intangible stimulus.

“Should I be afraid of you?” You asked back in response.

“Good question. I'm glad you asked it”, the man confessed, straightening his head again and smiling momentarily before resuming his stoic expression, with his attention focused on you. “The answer to your question, and consequently mine, you will find in your search for the truth. Because it is through the truth that you will achieve your goals, and it is through its search that you will free yourself”.

 _Am I talking to God or what? Why so much mystery? There is no need for him to be so enigmatic when speaking_ ; you didn't quite understand what he was trying to mean by the latter, but you still agreed. “And how am I going to do that? I don't even know where to start”.

“Your brothers and sisters will guide you, you just have to follow their tracks, resume their steps on the road. If you do, then they will help you when you need them most”, he said, extending his right hand towards you and urging you to take it while transmitting the following message in your mind: _Maturin. Never forget that name, Dæmon. When you feel like your life is in danger and there is nothing or no one else to save you, call out that name with all your might. That name has power, as does my true name and of other beings, and even more when mentioned by a Dæmon._

“What should have been revealed has been finally revealed. Now come to me and take my hand, your time here is coming to an end. You must go home”, the man added after what he had telepathically told you, still keeping his hand extended in your direction.

You didn’t hesitate to obey his order, walking towards him while your feet left their footprints in the soft sand and the little rose was left behind. However, you hesitated when you were about to grab his hand, leaving it in the air and a few inches above his; your eyes looking at the space between both hands and an expression close to uncertainty covering your face. The man didn’t tilt his head this time nor did he make another movement or gesture that betrayed any emotion, he simply stood there, with the palm of his right hand open and waiting for you. Maybe he already knew in advance that you would do exactly that? Would he also know what you were going to ask him before you go?

“What is your real name?”

The strands of his beard stopped moving instantly, as if your question had paralyzed them, and you saw a frown appear on his eyeless face for the first time. His immediate reaction made you panic quickly, feeling with every passing second that you had made a serious mistake asking that. You had probably made him uncomfortable or, in the worst case scenario, you had made him angry and now he wouldn’t let you go home, right? You mentally scolded yourself for such stupidity and tried to retract what you had said, looking for some appropriate apology that occurred to you. But in the end, you didn't have to say a word or take any action to apologize. He didn't let you.

The man in the dark robe closed the distance between both hands, gently holding your hand in his and transmitting back to you that pulse of warmth that you had felt before in your eyes. His frown was replaced by a remarkable smile that lasted longer than the previous one, and his beard hair resumed its usual individualized movement in all possible directions. You could feel his non-existent eyes looking at you with an unimaginable and incalculable intensity. “Humans often say the saying that it was curiosity that killed the cat, although curiously they almost never say that the cat died satisfied when saw what it discovered”.

His smile grew a little more subdued, though it never completely faded, and the handshake between the two of you grew stronger just as the sensation of warmth was more and more palpable in your palm. A small whip from his bearded hair gently tapped the tip of your chin before he spoke again. “Your curiosity is welcome, but I advise you not to say or use my real name, ____ Aubrey. Trust me, it's for your own good and for the ones around you. My name is… Gan”.

Right after he said it, everything exploded into a bright, incandescent white light that forced you to close your eyes for a few seconds. When you opened them again, the first thing you saw was a white ceiling; the back of your head was leaning on something and from your head to down you were submerged in water. You had returned to the bathroom of your house, you were naked and in the cold bathtub again. _Well, it's not as cold as before_ , you thought that as you collected a little water between your hands and then splashed it on your face, feeling an immediate freshness in it. You repeated the process several times until you were fully awake, clearing from your eyes the remnants of sleep, vision, or whatever that previous event had been. You would have another chance to put your mind to all that. The important thing now was to answer the following question: How long had it been?

It was thanks to your mother that you were able to know the answer. You didn't have to call her or break something, she appeared on her own in the bathroom shortly after you woke up (after knocking on the door to let you know she was coming in, of course). In her hands she carried a set of home clothes for you and left it on a small bench, next to the bathtub, before grabbing the towel that was hanging on the towel rack. Then she came closer to you to touch your wet forehead with one of her hands, smiling deeply after a few seconds when she didn’t feel any fever.

“It seems that those 15 minutes of bath in cold water worked perfectly, ____. You no longer have fever and you are now more relaxed. Your body doesn't look as stiff as before”, she said, being truly happy for your health improvement. “But tell me, does your neck still hurt or is that gone too?”

“I'm fine, mom. Your unorthodox method worked 100%, but I hope you use warm water next time. I almost froze in here!” You said in an exaggerated exclamation tone that made your mother laugh and you too seconds later, though not for the same reasons. _Was it only 15 minutes? I cannot believe it_ ; your laugh was meant to hide how you really felt inside: confused, perplexed, and wanting to find out more about it. “Also, those 15 minutes were too boring for me. I was alone, with no one to talk”.

“Don't be so exaggerated, ____. The water was only cold, not icy, and you don't like someone else to be in the bathroom with you. That makes you uncomfortable and nervous, even more if you don't have much or no clothes on you”, your mother explained before continuing. “Although maybe you're right about something. I could have brought you Matt to entertain yourself meanwhile...”

“And then remembering that's a really bad idea, because Matt is a stuffed animal and he's not waterproof. Yes, I know and that no longer matters. But at least tell me I can get out of the bath now, please?” You took your hands out of the water and held them in supplication, looking at her with expectant eyes.

“Of course! For that I brought you the clothes, you've been there long enough”, she replied with a fond smile and handing you the towel. “So dry off and get dressed. Your breakfast is still waiting for you downstairs in the dining room”.

“Nice. Could you put it in the microwave? I guess the food must be cold from so much waiting”.

“I’m going to do it right away, don't worry”.

“Thanks, ma”.

Your mother nodded at your thanks before leaving the bathroom to give you privacy, and you quickly used the towel to dry your wet face and hair while with your other hand you reached for the bathtub drain plug. It didn't take long to find it and pull it out so that the water began to drain through the hole, progressively decreasing its quantity levels until there was nothing left. With the tub empty and the towel drying the rest of your body, you thought everything was done. But even in your reality of normalcy, a vestige of something else remained, a reminder that the adventure was only just beginning.

You saw it when you went to get your clothes to get dressed. It was a small rose on your clothes, the same rose that had been planted in the golden sands of that desert. Dark pink on the outside, fiery red on the inside and with a center as yellow as the radiant sun. And it was then that you understood. You answered his call, he answered yours, and now neither of you would abandon the other until the end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just to say this again and again: Thanks for reading and see ya again soon~


	9. A Bit of History

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "All I know is that history repeats itself and people are going to want to experience the world. But I know then they are going to have a better appreciation for what is here in Maine". -John Baldacci

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two WHOLE months without an update... What the hell is wrong with me?! Not really good excuses for this one, I didn't have a writer's block or something like that. I only know that I just got distracted playing Horizon Zero Dawn and puff! A month and two weeks later, I earned its platinum trophy and I had nothing written about the chapter until then. And I was like: ok, ok you had your fun, but now it's time to put your author's butt in the chair and write something. Several weeks passed and here we are! 
> 
> So, yeah... sorry for the somewhat long wait and I hope you enjoy it~!

“Bill was here and you haven't told me until now?!”

“You were in the bathroom when he came in and I wasn't going to interrupt your late breakfast for something so trivial, either, ____. Also, just because you are better now doesn’t mean that you are going to leave the house”.

“Mom!”

“I'm sorry, honey, it's for the sake of your health”.

Your exasperation was quite evident —it was clearly reflected on your face— but your mother stood firm to her word and her gaze challenging yours. Silently, she was prompting you to contradict her if you had the guts to do so, even though you both knew this was a fight you couldn't win. Because you had no chance at all to challenge her, not without sounding rude or like a jerk in the process; the TV was on in the background, subtly echoing through the room until you finally answered your mother. Not in words, but in actions. You snorted in annoyance as you crossed your arms as you sat back in the chair behind you, looking away and reluctantly accepting what your mother imposed on you.

“Come on, ____. Don't make that pouty face”, she said, smiling apologetically at you but not really regretting her earlier decision. “Do you want to hear something good about all of this?”

You didn’t turn your head to observe your mother, your bad temper was distilled from your eyes and you didn’t want to make her angry for a stupid thing like looking at her badly. You simply hummed in interest to her question and she immediately followed up with what she was planning to say. “As you already suppose, when Bill came to look for you, I had to say to him that you couldn’t leave the house because you were ill. So the good thing about all of this is that before he left, Bill told me to tell you that he would come back later to visit you”.

“Typical of Bill. Always worrying about his friends”, you commented, smiling for a few seconds before returning to your original but now less grumpy facial expression. “Yes, I guess that's a good thing. Although in the same way I would have preferred to go to the quarry”.

“To the quarry? What were you going to do there with Bill?” Your mother asked, taking a seat on one of the sofa seats.

“Not just with Bill. Richie, Eddie and Stan were going too, and I guess Ben and Beverly were going too because Bill invited them”, you clarified that point first and then continue with the rest of the explanation. “Well, we were going to the quarry to do some diving. You know, the quarry is like a huge natural springboard and the lake below is its pool. According to the boys, it is the only place in all of Derry where you can jump from a great height without dying and swim peacefully in the sunlight. Sounds like fun, right?”

“I think so, it reminds me of my childhood. My childhood friends and I used to walk around that same quarry. The boys challenged each other to see who dared to jump into the lake, while the girls just enjoyed the scenery”, your mother confessed, smiling conspicuously at the memory of something so memorable, but not realizing your confusion and bewilderment until she looked at you after a while. “What? Why do you make that face?”

“You said: ‘my childhood friends and I used to walk around that same quarry’. Does that mean you lived here in Derry when you were a kid?” You asked.

“You are right. I was born in Derry Municipal Hospital and lived on Harris Avenue with your grandparents until my teens. Had I never mentioned it to you?” Your movement of head was a resounding no to your mother and she sighed before continuing. “I thought I did tell you before. Well, never mind, you already know another interesting fact from my past”.

“I see, Harris Avenue… Why did you only live there until your teens?” You asked again quickly, causing your mother to look at you with some surprise and attention for your sudden interest in the matter. Maybe you really wanted to know more about your mother, maybe you didn't, but anything was better than remembering about your failed trip to the quarry. “I mean, something must have happened so, I don't know, you decided to leave?”

You noticed how a strange and unusual grim expression suddenly clouded your mother's face, although she tried to hide it more or less with a forced smile when she spoke. “It was by decision of your grandparents, ____. They… were no longer comfortable living in Derry at that time, so they soon decided that it was better to live in another town… in a quieter one. So we moved to Oakes, where I spent the rest of my adolescence and adulthood”.

“And that was the only reason they moved? Because, knowing my grandparents, I highly doubt that they would leave a town like Derry just for that. There must be another reason, mom. Something else happened here, didn't it?” Her forced smile completely crumbled at your insinuation and her expression grew grimmer as the conversation continued. “Because you and your grandparents not only moved to another town, but to another state. There is a considerable distance between Derry and Oakes, between Maine and North Carolina. So no, I don't believe the story that they only left to live in a ‘quieter town’ by far”.

“You're not going to stop insisting until I give you a satisfactory answer, are you?” Your quick nod was more than a simple confirmation for your mother, she knew that she couldn’t continue avoiding the subject and the right you had to know the truth. “Okay, I admit it. Yes, there is another reason why your grandparents decided to leave Derry for good many years ago… And it was because I wanted to run away”.

“Did you... you wanted to run away?”

“Yes, I wanted to run away from something, from someone about 27 years ago. I remember my parents couldn't see or hear it, neither could my friends'. I also remember the constant nightmares that woke me up at night, the fear I felt when I saw its golden eyes in the darkness of my closet or when I heard its voice under my bed...”

 _Golden eyes? Golden eyes like the clown's?_ You thought about asking your mother more about those golden eyes that she saw when she was young, you really thought about it and were about to ask her when another voice stopped you. That other voice appeared suddenly and apparently couldn’t be heard by your mother, she kept recounting her past as if nothingness while you could hear it. The kind, loving and gentle voice asked you not to ask that, that this question would cause more harm than answers, the voice asked you to only listen, that later would come your time to act. And you did that instantly at the moment the voice disappeared from the place.

“...I used to go often to your grandparents' bedroom to tell them everything, about the nightmares and what I saw and heard in my room. Of course they didn't believe me, they thought it was all a figment of my imagination or that they were just crazy ideas of mine. Also, they were too busy and preoccupied with other matters to pay attention to my 'imaginary problems'. But I kept insisting that those golden eyes that were watching me were as real as the missing children, that the voice that whispered in my ear was as real as the murder of several of my friends and colleagues. I kept insisting that the feeling of helplessness, frustration and fear that I felt during 1962 was real and that the creature that caused all this was real too!”

If you didn’t know your mother so well or if you were anyone else, you would surely think that she was on the verge of a strong emotional attack (even though you have never seen her reach that situation before). Her brown, tear-stained eyes stared at you with mind-boggling intensity, but at the same time they seemed to be focused on something else, as if they were seeing something —someone— from the past through you. Her lower lip was visibly trembling under the bite of her teeth, controlling the urge to scream, and cry as well, as she kept her breath from getting even harsher than it already was. Your mother was holding back her emotions so as not to scare you, trying in vain to suppress those memories of her youth that she would have preferred to erase completely from her memory. And that was why now you better understood her reaction to your questions, because what she was feeling in those moments went beyond a simple delusion, panic or state of hysteria. It was fear, absolute fear of remembering something that time was supposed to have made her forget, and all because you wanted to search for the truth behind the mystery.

“Mom... You don't have to keep talking about this if you don't want to... You really don't have to...” You started to say, feeling a lump form in your throat that made it difficult for you to swallow normally; you knew the guilt was eating you away and you were going to accept it as punishment. However, your mother responded quickly with a total shaking of her head and going back to her story.

“The last straw was when I decided to run away from home. I had already planned everything: a coat for the cold, a backpack full of food, money to pay for the bus ticket, among other things that I could carry with me. I was a teenager, I wasn’t thinking clearly the night I made that decision. I just knew that I was fed up with no one listening to me and that leaving Derry seemed like the only solution to that problem. So I did, I left my house and went by bicycle to the bus terminal, but I never got to board a bus. I couldn’t. I regretted it at the last second, because I was scared when I heard what was happening on Kansas Street. It was the Black Spot. The Black Spot was on fire”.

Your eyes were startled in both recognition and surprise at hearing her mention the Black Spot incident. Yes, you knew that the Black Spot was an old nightclub where the patrons were, for the most part, African-Americans who just wanted to have a good time. You also knew that same nightclub was burned by the Maine Legion of White Decency, in a racist act that resulted in a worrying number of deaths —suffocated, scorched, trampled on by others— and many of the survivors burned for life. But, until this moment, you never imagined your mother being there, so close and at the same time so far from the place where that tragedy occurred (now it was Memorial Park). The anguish and concern your mother must have felt for her parents, your grandparents, in that instant when she found out about the fire at the Black Spot and she had no idea where they were.

“I didn't know if your grandparents were there or not, but something inside me told me that I had to go with them. If they were really at the Black Spot, locked in while it was on fire or outside trying to help, then I must be there too. I must save them, I must help them save others. So I jumped on my bike without a second thought and pedaled as fast as possible through Kansas Street to get to the Black Spot. I still remember the great relief I felt to see that your grandparents were safe and sound: they were sitting on the sidewalk in the street, their clothes were somewhat dusty with smoke, but nothing else apart from that. Your grandparents had managed to get out of the premises before the fire blocked any escape route. And I was so grateful for that fact, so happy that they were alive, that I threw my bike on the asphalt of the street and jumped on both of them to hug them”.

There was a small pause in her story, an instance of silence that made you a bit uncomfortable and made you look to your mother to continue. It was then that you noticed. A slight smile, but this time it was a real smile, had appeared on her lips. It was a nostalgic smile at having something that was worth remembering, because that moment was one of the few —not to say almost nonexistent— good things that had happened to her in that mysterious, sinister, and dangerous time. Her eyes were still watery, although the contained tears weren’t as many as before (and now you were beginning to believe that those tears were there for another emotion). Your mother seemed… relieved? As if a weight was being lifted from her as she continued with what was needed to finish the story of her dark past in Derry.

“What happened next is blurry for me. I know that the rest of that night was busy and chaotic, with firefighters trying to put out the fire, police patrols investigating the scene, and several paramedics treating and taking seriously injured people away in ambulances. But beyond that, I don't remember much about it. Just your grandparents and I coming home, exhausted both physically and mentally for the next day's discussion, because believe me, there was”, she said on a sigh, wiping her watery eyes with her fist and her wistful smile fading, “I had to tell them about my attempt to run away from home. I couldn't look at them in the face and pretend that it hadn't happened while they had been in danger or not in that fire. But in the end, more than angry at my stupid action, your grandparents were seriously worried about me. My escape attempt, along with the Black Spot, made them react. Somehow your grandparents also realized that something was wrong in Derry. And regardless of the peace and tranquility that was in town afterwards, your grandparents made the decision to leave, never to return”.

“But you came back, mom…” You said quickly and without thinking, as if your comment had been an involuntary reflex action. You couldn't help but blurt out the new doubts and questions that were forming in your head. “And that's something I still don't understand, because it doesn't make any sense. If Derry still brings back such bad memories of your teenage years, then why did you decide to return to this town? Why did we move here?”

You've seen so many displays of positive and negative emotions on your mother's face together, so adding one more to the list shouldn't surprise you at all. However, rather than being surprised, you were confused by the mixed expression that was reflected on her face when hearing your questions. This was a strange mix of amusement and nervousness, as if your questions amused her but, at the same time, she was nervous about the answer she had to give you. “How curious. I never intended to go back, but we moved to Derry because you asked me to, ____”.

“What?” Now you were truly surprised.

“Yes, just as you heard; you may not remember much of that. We were at your fifth birthday party and it was time to blow out the candles on the cake to make a wish. That was your wish: to live in Derry”, she explained, “and now that we are talking about it, I must confess that particular wish seemed very… unusual to me. When I asked you why Derry, my old childhood town but didn't remember mentioning it to you before, you simply said: _Because that's where I want to be!_ ”

“Oh… seriously? And didn't I say anything else? I mean, I know I'm pretty forgetful about a lot of things, but I find it very strange that I don't remember anything like that at all. The whole situation itself even seems surreal”; your confusion and uneasiness were only increasing, along with your frown that was obvious enough for your mother to notice from her position. Something wasn’t fitting and you knew it. “I, a five-year-old girl, asking as a birthday wish to go live in a town, which was precisely the same town where you grew up and that you had to leave later. But the craziest and most incredible thing of all is that I didn't know about it until now”.

“I know, ____, I know. I've learned that when it comes to Derry, all things related tend to get weird, difficult to explain, and even creepy in the worst of circumstances. I have already experienced it, I am living it again and it doesn’t surprise me that you are going through the same thing too. But I guess that means you're not alone in this, neither of us are”, your mother said convincingly. After that, she got up from the couch and walked over to where you were sitting to grab your hand in a consoling caress. “So don't push yourself so hard to try to understand something that is beyond you, beyond your control. Remember that you are still just a girl, be better than me”.

You nodded at her maternal touch and words of encouragement, but still smiled wryly at the turn of the situation. You were supposed to comfort her, not the other way around. You made her talk about something she didn’t want to talk about from the beginning and this was the result, you feeling more sentimental than your mother and finding more details of the past than you had planned to discover. That guilty lump that was still in your throat was well deserved. “Thanks for everything, mom. And I'm also sorry I made you feel bad”.

“Don't apologize, it's not your fault but mine. I shouldn't have waited so many years to tell you all of this. Every time I tried to talk about it, I was always cowed by convincing myself that you weren't ready for that conversation, when in fact it was me who wasn't ready”; your mother raised your hand to her lips to give it a soft kiss on the back before releasing it, looking at you fondly with a smile you knew quite well. “So don't apologize, it's me who should apologize and thank you. If it weren't for your curiosity and desire to know more, I would still continue in the same vicious circle, without facing the reality of my past for fear of remembering. You have lifted a weight from me, ____. Thanks to you I feel better, more free and calm”.

After that, there was no more talk between the two of you. Just a nod from you, then accompanied by a giggle you let out when you felt your mother's hand ruffling your hair for a few seconds before she left the room, probably going to the kitchen to make lunch. You stayed a moment longer in the place, with no real reason to get up from the comfortable chair while you saw if there was something interesting on the television (the control had been at your fingertips from the beginning), changing the channels quickly but soon disappointing you when find nothing good. So it wasn’t at all surprising that, despite your zero desire to get up from the couch, you also left there in the end. Walking around the house without a fixed course until it was 12 noon, lunchtime. And when that time came, you ate a delicious meal in the company of your mother, chatting with you about whatever came to her mind, and Matt —picked up during your ride against boredom—, being above your head as if it were a hat or a soft helmet that made your mother laugh every time she saw it there. Both of you having a good time together.

Of course, for everything to finally be perfect, the thing with Bill was still pending, his promise that he would come back to your house to visit you. Promise that would be fulfilled after 4:00 pm, when you were lying on the main staircase with nothing better to do and suddenly you heard someone knocking on the door of the house. Your mother peeked out from the music room to see what was happening, but the person who attended the door was you, quickly getting up from the stairs and opening the door to see the only one Bill Denbrough behind it. He was wearing a short-sleeved blue shirt with yellow stripes, blue jean shorts, and white sneakers. His watch, as always, on his right wrist and Silver was lying carelessly on the side of the street; apparently, he had come at full speed with his big bike. In his blue eyes there was a flash of happiness to see you, reflected even more by the appearance of a shy smile when he greeted you.

“Hi, ____! How are yuh-you?” Bill asked quickly before continuing with what he planned to say. “I had come here be-be-before to the thing of the q-q-quarry, to go thu-thu-together. B-b-but your mother thu-told me you were too s-s-sick to go. That's why I came again to s-s-see you. Duh-do you f-f-f-feel better now?”

“Awww, how considerate you are to worry about me, Bill-Billy! You're making me blush!” You exclaimed tenderly because of his obvious interest in your health, his concern was completely genuine and that moved you to the point that you couldn't help but smile. “But yeah, I'm better now. It was just a small fever accompanied by some muscle pain, nothing that my mom couldn't fight with a nice cold bath and a little bit of pain salve”.

“B-b-but it doesn't hurt you so mu-mu-much anymore, right?” Bill said almost instantly and with a noticeable look of concern, not wanting to hear otherwise, but it turned into an expression of relief when you nodded. “S-s-so good. The boys and Beverly have also been whu-whu-worried about you, they missed yuh-you all the time we were in the q-q-quarry...”

“I think so, I missed a lot. So you have to give me a summary of everything they did without me to catch up with you”, you commented laughing as you winked at him, although then you frowned slightly and raised an eyebrow at Bill's lack of response. “What? Are you really not gonna tell me anything? Was it so uninteresting? Seriously?”

And as if you had brought Bill out of a trance with his own thoughts, he began to blink rapidly at your consecutive questions. “E-eh? No-no, it's not that. No-nothing like that. It's j-j-just... I-I know you're in better health and I'm happy f-f-f-for you, b-b-but I f-f-feel like you sh-sh-should go to rest, ____. I whu-whu-wouldn't want you to have a relapse or so-so-something be-be-because of me. We can talk better thu-thu-tomorrow”.

 _Rest my ass, Bill! You have no idea how bored I was today! And I highly doubt that just talking to you will make me sick again… I couldn't even explain to you the real reason why I got sick in the first place!_ You thought to yourself and without any intention of actually telling him, of course. Among all your available options, you instead opted for: “Oh come on, Bill-Billy, don't be like that to me now. I'm completely fine, I'm not going to have a relapse or anything like that. Also, we aren’t going to take too long talking. If it's late, I'll invite you to dinner”.

Nor was it that you gave Bill much time to answer what you just said, he was very off guard thinking; you grabbed him by both hands and pulled him into the house, making him look at you in surprise as a slight blush adorned his white cheeks. Your mother pretended not to see anything, going back into the music room to play the violin while you dragged Bill into the living room, but you knew she was still watching both of you from there. Because your mother, unlike your stepfather, liked to watch over you subtly and with a mischievous smile that if you saw it, it would tell you: “You two are more interesting than the characters in the novels I see at night”. And you didn't blame her, your mother possibly had a certain reason in thinking that and she could take advantage of seeing the moment all she wanted, as long as she didn’t intervene like your stepfather. The worst thing that could happen was that your mother began to tease you in the presence of Bill, just as your stepfather would do at the slightest opportunity that was presented to him.

Once inside the living room, you sat Bill on the sofa and moments later you followed, sitting next to him. At no point in the conversation did you let go of his hands from yours, not even when you started talking about how excited you were to find out who had jumped off the quarry first. “Tell me it was Richie! Please tell me it was Richie!”

“Actually it was Beverly. When I asked who's f-f-first to j-j-jump, sh-sh-she showed up with her bike and s-s-said that she’ll go. Sh-sh-she took off her su-su-suit to be in underwear like the guys and then j-j-jumped, calling us s-s-sissies”.

“Hahaha, I can't believe it! You just got shown off by a girl! Her jump must have been incredible and I can imagine Richie's "what the fuck" face when he saw her!” You exclaimed, laughing at the top of your lungs for a few seconds before returning to normal, taking deep breaths to calm yourself, although you still continued to let out an occasional laugh as you imagined over and over the possible reactions of the boys at that moment. “But now tell me. After her, did you and the other guys jump too or what?”

“Of-of course we all j-j-jump! Well, S-S-Stan was the only one who hesitated to j-j-jump, b-b-but Eddie convinced him to duh-do it too. At the end of the day, we all s-s-swam in the lake, we had f-f-f-fun s-s-splashing water among us, and even we had a battle”, the last thing Bill said caught your attention, so you raised an eyebrow in interest and momentarily tightened the grip between both hands for him to get your message Bill did it instantly, giggling before continuing. “Yeah, the battle was be-be-between Beverly and Richie. Beverly got on my sh-sh-shoulders and Richie on Ben’s, while Eddie and S-S-Stan kept s-s-splashing water on each other”.

“And who won the wonderful battle of the lake? I could try to guess who it was, but that would be very boring of me. I'd rather like you to tell me, Bill-Billy, so I don't take the emotion out of your story”, you said smiling and with a shrug of your shoulders.

“It was Richie. He knocked Beverly into the water be-be-before sh-sh-she to him and raised his hands in v-v-victory”, Bill replied, laughing a little at the memory of the scene, “I guess he was s-s-so glad he had gotten his rematch. You know, who's j-j-jumped f-f-f-first”.

“I think so. I know Richie, I know he's like that. But we love him that way, don't we?” Bill nodded and you, although you already knew it, were still happy for him. After all, Richie was and would continue to be one of your best friends along with the other boys. “So that was the only battle they had?”

"Yeah, after that we all s-s-started s-s-swimming f-f-for a little longer be-be-before we go out. And Richie s-s-stepped on a turtle”, your unexpected face of horror surprised Bill (and amused him too), because almost instantly he released his hands from yours and began to shake them, making a calm gesture as he tried to explain between the laughter that escaped from his mouth and his typical stutter. “Calm down, it was a j-j-joke! Richie didn't s-s-stomp on it, it j-j-just touched his f-f-foot! He didn't even know it was a tur-tur-turtle until I s-s-saw it under the water! No-nothing happened to it, I s-s-swear!”

“God, Bill! Why do you scare me like that? There was no need for you to tell me that, stop being so cruel to me”, you said with crossed arms and using your best expression of annoyance, but with a crooked smile to make him understand that you too were screwing him in retaliation. “At least tell me all of you left the poor turtle alone and went, I don't know, to a rock to listen to music”.

“O-oh? How did yuh-you guess?” Bill asked with a raised eyebrow, to which you responded with a brief stick out of your tongue that brought back his previous laugh at times. “W-w-well yes. Richie had bro-bro-brought his radio to hear a little b-b-bit of Young MC”.

“By chance, did Richie play Bust A Move? I mean, that's the best rap song of the year and I wouldn't be surprised if he played it”, Bill looked at you smiling at your correct guess and nodded quickly to your great satisfaction. “I knew it! Richie and his blessed musical fashion sense!”

“Yuh-you know him very well, ____. B-b-but, I don’t think Richie j-j-just played that s-s-song be-be-because it's f-f-famous. There was also another reason…” Bill began saying in a somewhat low tone of voice with a touch of shyness. The hell with that? It seemed as if in his original plan he hadn't really intended to tell you that.

“Oh? And I could know what the other reason was?” You asked, absolutely curious at the startled reaction Bill had after listening to you, and also at the answer behind your question that made Bill jump startled.

“W-w-well, Richie s-s-said he play it be-be-because it's the s-s-song of the moment and also be-be-because it reminds him a lot of you. At s-s-school, when you tried to s-s-sing it with him at recess or at the exit, even thu-thu-though you didn't know almost no-no-nothing about the lyrics. S-s-so I guess he played that s-s-song so you whu-whu-would j-j-join us in the q-q-quarry, although yuh-you weren’t physically there with us”, Bill said quite ashamed and looking down to the side, while you were holding back the immense urge to laugh. But it wasn't for the same reasons Bill was thinking now. “I know, it s-s-sounds s-s-stupid. It's s-s-stupid...”

"Maybe, but it’s so stupidly cute that you think that about Richie. I know he loves me like a sister and I love him too, but this? This is another level! It's so much better than his failed ‘flirtations’ last year and I mean it”, you confessed with two or three giggles escaping your self-control and causing Bill to slowly return your gaze, smiling gently at you. “I'll let it know to Casanova Richie when I see him again. Thanks, Bill-Billy”.

"It's nothing... Any-anyway, we all liked the s-s-song, including Beverly who was resting in the s-s-sun with her s-s-sunglasses while sh-sh-she listened to it”, Bill clarified without much detour, still smiling and with his blue gaze on you. “Although, of-of course, Richie himself ruined the moment s-s-some time later by s-s-snooping in Ben's backpack”.

“Typical of Richie. Always ruining the moment with some bad joke, comment or inappropriate action”, you laughed momentarily before continuing with what you thought to ask, frowning slightly. “But why Ben's backpack? Was something of value inside?”

“I don't think s-s-so, Richie j-j-just got two things out of it. The f-f-f-first one was a postcard, which Ben q-q-quickly put back into his backpack, and the other was s-s-some f-f-folder f-f-filled with photocopies of newspapers. Photo-photocopies of tragic news that happened a long time ago, like-like the Kitchener Ironworks explosion in 1908, the Bradley Gang sh-sh-shootout in 1935, and the Black S-S-Spot’s f-f-f-fire in 1962. V-v-very interesting, right?”

“Hm, I guess so. I’m aware that Ben loves the history of this town and that is one of the many reasons why he often spends some time at the Derry Public Library, reading more and more books. But it's still strange, why he has photocopies of that type of old news? I highly doubt that this news are for a history project or something”, you said in a thoughtful tone and trying to keep your composure in front of Bill, because in your mind you were already freaking out with conspiracy theories: _27 years, something terrible happens approximately every 27 years. From 1962 to this year there are 27 years of difference. My mother wasn’t exaggerating, something is really wrong with Derry._

“W-w-well... Ben explained that Derry's not like any thu-thu-town he’d ever been in be-be-before... He s-s-said that s-s-some people did a s-s-study once... and it turns out puh-puh-people die or disappear s-s-six times the national average... And not j-j-just grown-ups, also children b-b-but worse, like way worse by comparison…” Bill answered hesitantly and with a troubled expression on his face, which only softened a bit when you consciously grabbed his hands in yours again. Bill was thinking about Georgie, which was pretty obvious; the clasped hands was a kind of understanding caress.

“And that's where it all ended?” You asked cautiously, not wanting to meddle more than necessary on an issue that was beginning to cause an obvious feeling of unease in Bill. However, he simply smiled, shaking his head as he held each other's hands at times to show that everything was fine.

“No-no, we went to Ben's house to s-s-see more of his stuff. You mu-mu-must have s-s-seen that, _____. His room was impressive, it was f-f-f-full of more pictures and papers to the walls”, Bill said in a voice that sounded somewhere between astonishment and curiosity as he remembered everything he saw there. “B-b-but the most in-interesting thing about all, is that he had a copy of the ch-ch-charter f-f-f-for Derry Township. Yuh-you know, Derry was a be-be-beaver trapping camp be-be-before it be-be-became what it’s now”.

“Yeah, I know. I learned that in a history class with Mr. Carson. But the charter for Derry Township? What's with that?” You looked at him moderately confused, not understanding very well the relationship of the charter with everything else.

“According to Ben, ninety-one puh-puh-people s-s-signed the ch-ch-charter that made Derry, b-b-but later in that winter, they all d-d-disappeared without a trace. No Indians attacks or s-s-some plague, the on-on-only clue that remained of them was a trail of-of clothes leading to the well-house”.

And with that said, your confusion dissipated. Bill's explanation of the Derry’s founders seemed to be the icing on the cake, a cake made from a whole series of tragic events that made up the history of the town. The unfinished history of Derry that was destined to repeat itself over and over again every 27 years approximately. You felt truly uneasy at that idea, it was part of the reality you were living right now, and it also made you think beyond: Your mother's story and your conversation with Bill weren’t a mere coincidence, the missing children weren’t a simple random event and, above all, that the blue/gold eyed clown was more than he appeared to be...

 _It can't be my speculation. That clown is undoubtedly related to all this, one way or another he has to be. Something, someone, tells me that I’m right, that I’m on the right track_ , you thought inquisitively as a pleasant smile crossed your lips and you slightly tilted your head to the side, looking at Bill with curious eyes. “Did you say the well-house? Hm. Yeah, that sounds like something to me, it must have been somewhere in Derry. Exact point of its location? Unfortunately I don't know”.

“Me neither. B-b-but if we have a map and use s-s-some basic geography, we could f-f-f-find the site where it was be-be-before. Look, the idea is not s-s-so b-b-bad now that I think about it. If-if you want, we can duh-do it. Yuh-you and me, thu-thu-together in a new adventure to s-s-solve a mystery of Derry”, you raised an eyebrow at his insinuation, you didn't know if he was serious or just wanted to liven up the atmosphere, but you ended up answering him with a giggle that made him smile tenderly. “That doesn’t c-c-count as an answer, ____. Yuh-yuh-you make me look like an idiot, b-b-but I'll let you pass this time be-be-because I think that you're s-s-still sick”.

That was a lie and both of you knew it, although neither of you really said anything to contradict. You and Bill preferred to take advantage of the little time that was left to talk about anything else that was pending to say; the previous conversation almost completely forgotten. Because when your stepfather arrived at the house —and with a well-known large bicycle that he 'found' on the street at his hand— it was time for dinner and there was no more space for so much chatter between you two. At least, not without your stepfather's hawk eye on top. So Bill, nervously and being a complete stuttering disaster, said goodbye to you faster than lightly and to your mother too, of course. He respectfully greeted your stepfather before having with him a small, but entertaining to watch, struggle to get his beloved Silver back to him and then getting out of there like a jet at top speed.

“These kids now…” Your stepfather muttered, first giving a peck on the lips to your smiling mother (who had come out of the music room to greet him and had witnessed everything that happened), and then approaching you and playfully stirring your hair next to a kiss he gave you on the forehead. “Hey, princess. You want to explain me what Denbrough was doing here? I thought you were too sick to receive… visits?”

“Ooor, why don't you tell me how work went today? I think that will be much more interesting to hear over dinner”, you said, radically changing the matter and then fleeing to the dining room when your stepfather opened his mouth to reply as you made a satisfied smile. “No, we better leave it at that...”

You sat in one of the chairs at the dining room table and waited patiently for your parents to show up to be there with you, which happened a few moments later. Your mother, Andy, and you, each with a plate full of delicious food prepared by your mother, sitting around the table and eating while everyone talked about something. Work, music, the weather, anything. You internally thanked your mother, to not mention what she spoke to you in the morning, and your stepfather, for not asking about Bill's visit again. Because what you needed most now was precisely that, calm down, and be at peace with your thoughts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! But hey, don't go just yet! I have something else for you! Like some sort of compensation for this delay, I gonna try to update the next chapter on October, 31th. But here's a trick: if I don't publish chapter 10 on that date, then you can punish me. What kind of punishment? Whatever you think of, but please don't be too severe. I think a request for an one-shot is a good punishment... just saying. So, we have a deal? Yes? No? It's okay.
> 
> See ya again in Halloween (or I hope so)~


	10. You'll Float Too!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Why swim or sink, if you can float? It's that easy. You can float like the missing children, you can float like your siblings. You can float with all of them. You'll float too!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This really can count as a Halloween special? Hmmm... Maybe yes, maybe not. I don't know, but hey! The chapter's here like I promised! So please, enjoy reading it meanwhile I'm here, surprised that I just finished writing it before midnight (in my country, of course XD).

You knew it was going to be a terrible night from the moment you saw him. You were on your way to lock the back door of the house, just like your mother told you to do before going to sleep, and that's when you saw him through the window in the door. The clown was there, in the backyard of your house, standing next to the big oak tree and holding the thin white string of a red balloon with his gloved left hand. He didn’t care in the least about the thunderstorm that was beating down on him, with the continuous drops of rain sliding down the smooth surface of the globe until they fell to earth. His platinum suit was completely drenched as well the orange streaks of his bald head and the wet white and red makeup on his face was progressively fading into several patches of fair skin. The lightning bolt highlighted his blue eyes, the same blue eyes that later turned to sparkling gold when they met yours, startled in a twisted emotion at the sight of you as he raised his other gloved hand to greet you while grinning sinisterly as always.

 _Seriously? This has to be a bad joke. What does that damn clown want from me now? Doesn't he have anything better to do?_ You thought, not responding to his greeting and locking the door before turning around to get out of there as quickly as possible. You weren't going to go along with him, not this time. You knew that this clown had appeared in another attempt to take away that little peace of mind you had left —the result of a strange and sentimental like this one— but you weren’t going to allow him. You've had more than enough for today. Better to turn your back on him now, to pretend you hadn't seen him, than to confront him directly later.

However, you didn't get very far with your plan. Your footsteps stopped abruptly as you passed near your mother's music room, your ears sharpening as you heard the music that was coming from within. The rhythm of the instrument was slow, the soft, delicate melody of a violin composing a sad lullaby. But your mother was in the upstairs room with your stepfather, both of them sleeping in their double bed, so she couldn't be the one playing it. With cautious steps, you silently peeked into the musical room to see who the author of the song was. You were almost certain it would be the clown, who would have disappeared from the backyard and then magically reappeared in the music room, tempting you to look inside with the sound of your mother's violin. However, your eyes widened in unprecedented surprise to discover that it wasn’t him.

It was a man, but that man wasn’t the clown. His clothing didn’t match the clown's at all, it wasn’t a pompous platinum suit with red thread embroidery. His clothes looked more like something a gentleman would normally wear in the last century or during an important event today: a shirt with a tie around the neck, a waistcoat buttoned next to the morning coat, formal cloth trousers, and shoes. His hair color wasn’t compatible either, it was brown not orange like the clown's locks. But, perhaps, the most distinctive feature was on his face, standing out under his greenish eyes that noticed your presence while he continued to play the violin. A horrible white smile. Or that was what you believed until you realized that the man wasn’t actually smiling, that what you were seeing wasn’t the whites of his teeth.

The white thing was a mushroom, the head of a mushroom occupying the entirety of his mouth and spreading his lips in such a way that it seemed to form a smile. However, the above couldn’t be more false, that supposed smile was nothing more than a twisted grimace on the contracted face of a man about to faint. The big mouthful of the mushroom was choking him. His watery green eyes, saliva leaking from the corners of his lips, the tense muscles in his neck and lower jaw, the paleness of his skin turning to a bluish tint. They were all symptoms of suffocation, air wasn’t getting into his lungs and oxygen wasn’t reaching his blood. The man in front of you was choking on a mushroom to death, but even that wasn’t the worst part of the situation presented to you.

The green-eyed man wasn’t trying to chew and swallow just any mushroom, that mushroom wasn’t one of those edible mushrooms that someone might happen to find in the Barrens or in Bassey Park, along the banks of the Kenduskeag. On the contrary, that white fungus was poisonous, one of the worst apparently. Its deadly effects were tearing apart his dying body in the form of cramps and horrible muscle spasms that wouldn’t stop, although the man wasn’t giving up on continuing to devour the mushroom until there was none of it in his mouth. Was the choking suffocation not enough suffering before death? Was it really worth all the agony he was feeling from that poisonous mushroom? How could that man stand, calmly playing a melodic lullaby on your mother's violin, while he was going through all that feeling of suffocation and torturous punishment?

 _This man is not real. This man cannot be alive, not in the strict sense of the word. He is a trick, an illusion created by that fucking clown who doesn't even let me breathe easy in my own house. Remember that he has done several of these tricks before and will do it again whenever the opportunity presents itself. It’s not enough for him to appear in my dreams and disturb them_ ; the man began to chuckle at your thoughts, as if he were hearing them directly from your mind, and that made you feel uneasy. Something was going to happen, you were sure of it. Maybe this clown trick hadn't done anything terribly scary to you… yet, but you weren't going to stay there longer to find out.

You took a step back, then another, and another before turning. What happened next didn't even give you the time to react properly, you were stunned by the shock. It had all happened in the blink of an eye: a hissing sound in the air, the faint glint of grayish metal and something clawing violently into a surface. You closed your eyes abruptly to the thunderous crash that rang out next to you, paralyzed in your position for who knows how long, involuntarily shaking until you mustered up the courage to look. Just to your right, on the adjacent wall and less than 6 inches from your head, was an embedded axe. A double-bitted axe. You looked at it in a mixture of emotions, because you didn’t know whether to feel relief or fear at that moment. Relief that it didn't slice your head off or fear that it was just from a few inches of achieving its possible goal. Its metal blade nailed to a broken wall area and its wooden handle sticking out with a carved name. The name was Claude Heroux.

“You shouldn't turn your back on someone who is dedicating a song to you, young lady...”

The voice you heard was undoubtedly male, but it didn’t belong to the man inside the music room (the poisonous mushroom still lingered in his choked mouth —that white nightshade mushroom could be seen out of the corner of your eye—, he couldn't speak even if he wanted to). Nor did it belong to the clown. The voice was that of the alleged Claude Heroux, the owner of the axe, who decided to leave the darkness of the dining room after saying the above. However, you quickly understood that this man you were now seeing wasn’t the real Claude Heroux, he was just a trick orchestrated by the clown just like the other man. The real Claude lived and died in a time when not even your grandparents had been conceived, you knew that very well thanks to Mr. Carson's history classes (along with a not very well known book written by a 93 year old man named Egbert Thoroughgood). The bloody lumberjack clothes that this Claude was wearing reflected the clothes that the real Claude must have worn that day, September 9, 1907 in the old bar known as the Sleepy Silver Dollar, where he mercilessly killed several men with a woodsman’s double-bitted axe.

“Poor John Markson, he just wanted you to hear the melody of his favorite lullaby. The lullaby he and his wife used to sing to their children every night before bed. Doesn't it make you sleepy listening to it, young lady? The poor John has no one else to dedicate it. His children are dead, his wife is too. He killed them all with poison. He stacked their lifeless bodies in a circle around him and sang his favorite lullaby to them one last time before committing suicide. He ate a poisonous mushroom that caused him an excruciating death. What a sad and tragic story, right? But don't feel sorry for them, young lady. Their deaths served for something much bigger and more important. The William Muller's men I killed in the Sleepy Silver Dollar served to the same purpose. The deaths that came years and years later as well. Do you want to know what all those deaths were for?”

Trick of the clown or not, you didn’t want to be against someone like him. This guy gave you chills and a certain sense of dread that never quite went away. During the story of this John Markson and his family, he used the time to retrieve his precious axe, walking slowly towards the wall where it was nailed. His gait seemed like that of some kind of drunken man, half drowsy or dazed, but you soon realized that he couldn't be more awake and alert at the moment. Your breath hitched when you watched Heroux dislodge his axe from the wall with a sharp jerk of his right arm and then suddenly turned towards you. There was no smile under his dark mustache, he had an axe at hand, he was at an extremely close distance from you, and his blue eyes were like those of a hunter ready to shoot; the feeling of danger was normal. You felt that if you said something wrong or made a wrong move, he wouldn’t hesitate to use his axe to split your skull in two. And it was because of this thinking that you didn't try to get on the list with him and carefully nodded to his question. He answered you complacently.

“For him to wake up. Who? Well, Pennywise, young lady. Pennywise, the dancing clown, that's what he calls himself. Of course he has another name, a much more formal one with a last name included, but that is not important. The important thing here is that he needs to eat. Like any other person or animal, he eats too, you know? But how do you want him to eat something if he's sleeping? He can't, not while he sleeps. And that is why he needed to wake up, every so often he must wake up to eat and be able to fill that empty belly that cries out for food. It makes a lot of sense, doesn't it?”

You felt one of his callused hands resting on your shoulder, giving it a stronger grip more than was really necessary, while with the other hand he lowered his axe to the level of your eyes; the potential threat was there. You swallowed heavily at the sight of yourself more or less reflected in its metal sheet and nodded carefully for the second time on that night, just wanting that trick, ghost or whatever he was to leave you alone. Heroux chuckled at your reaction before continuing. “Well, there are those who don't understand that. Why don't you ask one of your brothers? What was the brat's name? Oh yeah… Robert Dohay. He seems to be an expert on the subject”.

You looked away from the metal blade of the axe to the ground, thoughtful. Robert Dohay? That name seemed strangely familiar to you… After a while, you began to hear footsteps coming from upstairs, as if someone or something was walking along the upper hallway of the house. At the same time, you stopped feeling the rough grip of Claude Heroux's hand on your shoulder and it was then that you had to cast your thoughts aside so that you could focus on what was happening now. You raised your eyes from the ground and you were surprised not to see the sharp metal blade in front of you, the axe had disappeared and the man who was holding it wasn’t at your side either; the adjacent wall intact. Markson had also faded, the sad melody of the violin no longer sounded in the darkened environment and everything in the music room was as it should be. The only thing that seemed to remain out of place were the sounds of footsteps in the hallway above. These were incessant, they didn’t stop for nothing, and they gave the impression that they were going from one end of the corridor to the other or walking into an infinite walk.

Because in all the time you stood there —standing still, foolishly waiting for something bad to happen—, at no time did you see someone coming down the stairs, you didn't see anyone peering at the bottom of them. The steps continued without a break, and inevitably you were beginning to believe that they never would. And you were right, they would never stop, they would not let go at least until you accepted their undeniable invitation. Well, indeed, that was what they were doing. They were inviting you, prompting you to climb the stairs on your own, and encouraging you to discover the origin of the mysterious steps. You understood that into one way or another you would have to go up, your room —but above all, your bed— was up there too, and sleep was beginning to consume you in the form of slight yawning. It was late at night, you couldn't stay downstairs forever. Trying to sleep on the living room sofa while listening to those footsteps constantly wasn’t an option for you, it never would be.

So, you made what you thought was the best decision: you walked up to the stairs and leaned on its railing before putting one of your feet on the first step. At this, the sounds of footsteps abruptly fell silent in response and you didn't know if that was a good sign or a terribly bad consequence (maybe both), but you didn't give up continuing to climb each step. No tricks, no scares from the clown. Everything went well, almost wonderful, until you reached the top of the stairs. And there he was, Pennywise himself, waiting for you from a corner of the hall. You quickly noticed that he was now wearing a farmer's outfit —instead of his typical clown dress—, that he was dry from head to toe, and that his makeup looked normal. But the thing that most caught your attention about him was between his gloved hands and your eyes widened in panic at the sight of it.

It was a rifle, a high-caliber shotgun pointed directly in your direction. His grinning painted face screamed at you that he was more than willing to shoot you, giving you just a few seconds to spare, to react, before he finally pulled the trigger. You catapulted your entire body to the floor in a swift and instinctive survival action, as the powerful noise of a cartridge being fired echoed through the hallway air, then followed by the sound of a window smashing in pieces and the maniacal laughter of the clown. While some bright stars appeared in your vision because of the sudden fall (which resulted in an unintended blow), in your mind you thought about how it was possible that your parents couldn’t hear the tremendous scandal. Pennywise's power over your house —and all Derry in general— was stronger than anyone could even imagine. That was the only simple way to explain why neither your mother nor your stepfather had woken up despite all the noise, why neither of them had desperately come out to check if you were okay.

It seemed that only you were going to be in the hall, trying to get up to catch your breath, with him, making fun of your inability to do it. You let out a ragged snort of frustration as you fell back to the floor, although inside you were more than relieved that the clown was now having some amusement by making fun of you, of your ridiculous effort, and not point-blank shooting at you with another shotgun shell. But of course, the feeling of relief was completely lost when you heard a second shot coming from the rifle. This shot was not aimed at you, you didn’t feel the pellets go through you or anything, but it would be a lie to say that you weren’t afraid at that moment. You had closed your eyes tightly from the shock and you were even shaking a little while you were still glued to the floor. You were helpless, awake in reality and not in a dream; you were afraid of the weapon that was capable of killing you at any moment, but not of the person — if you could call him like that— who was carrying it in his hands.

Perhaps that was why Pennywise gave up on his unorthodox method of action. Because he was extremely disappointed or ecstatic with what he found when he saw that something in you, when he smelt it on your skin. Maybe it wasn't what he expected or maybe it was and everything was going according to his plan from the beginning. But whatever the real motive behind his decision was, it didn't matter to you in the end. The only thing you got from him was a mocking laugh as he leaned in front of you, holding your chin firmly so that you could raise your gaze and focused on him as he spoke to you as if you were a little girl. The shotgun was lying carelessly on the floor, completely forgotten by the clown.

“Ah, but look at how you are now. Spread out on the floor, shaking like a Chihuahua and with those watery eyes on the verge of crying. Were you going into a panic attack, ____? Did you really think that the great Pennywise was going to kill you with that shotgun? How can you be so naive to believe such a thing?” He asked sarcastically before placing his other hand on your head, lightly patting your hair. Honestly, that so-called comforting caress couldn't be more feigned than it already was. “You have nothing to worry about, because it was never my intention to shoot you… directly. Dying like that would not have been worthy of your lineage, ____. If you really are going to die, then you will die like your brothers and sisters, you are going to die under my conditions”.

“Go to hell...” That was what you answered to him from your position.

The clown just chuckled at your comment and continued talking. “Don't be so rude. Today I feel generous and I am sharing a bit of my generosity with you, even though you don't deserve it”, with that said, his emotionally feigned slapping stopped on you and he also released your chin from his grip, letting your head fall back into place as he smirked at you with malicious intent. “I have noticed that lately you seem to be very interested in the history of this town and I, in my act of absolute generosity, have allowed you to meet one or two of its most famous characters. Even I count as one! Have you already seen my outfit?”

How not to see it? You didn't even have to squint your eyes up to see again the farmer clothes that Pennywise was wearing: a plaid shirt with long overalls, a pair of black waterproof boots, and the straw hat on his head, hiding his orange locks underneath. “I wore this set of clothes during a very special event that happened in 1935. The shotgun too. Because when you're in the middle of a firefight, what you want to do the most is shoot your enemies with your favorite weapon and without standing out too much from the crowd. Although, I could have also gone in my regular suit and those gangsters would have been killed by the citizens of Derry anyway...”

You knew perfectly what the clown was talking about, his words made clear reference to what happened to all the members of the Bradley's Gang in that year. But find out that he possibly participated and was one more implicated during the shooting? That was new, an additional fact that you had no idea before and now inevitably made you think; your brain preparing for the onset of a headache. If this clown was so closely related to Derry, if he knew its history and its inhabitants so well... Then why the hell was no one talking about him? Why wasn't anyone in the entire demonized town researching something, anything, about this madman? Because that was him, an insane clown who just wanted to scare and kill for sheer pleasure. Or to eat. That was the other impression he gave you, a theory backed up by the horrible nightmares of the missing children being eaten along with the words spoken by the ghostly illusion of the lumberjack Claude Heroux. There was so much below the surface about this clown, Pennywise or whatever he wanted to call himself, that hadn't been discovered yet, and the thought of it gave you an eerie feeling of anxiety.

“...But that doesn't matter anymore. What happened in the past stays in the past. It's not like that, ____?” Said the clown, his question waking you from your chaotic thoughts now locked in the depths of your tormented consciousness; you glared at him in response and didn't give a damn if that made him angry or not.

He did nothing more than an annoying laugh before standing up, then offering you his right hand and to which you growled a curse to yourself, but you ended up taking his gloved hand reluctantly a minute later. You were exhausted both physically and mentally, the two of you knew that you couldn't get off the floor without his help. So when you finally got to your feet, feeling your head throbbing painfully in your skull, you slapped his hand away from yours and spat a quick: “If you're done being a goddamn gentleman, I want you to go and leave me alone for the rest of this fucking night”.

“Well, well, look what we have here. I was just helping you, and so do you thank me? Today you have been more rude and insolent than usual, ____. If your mother listened to you, she would surely scold you for being such a spoiled child. But I'm not your mother, am I?” His squeaky mocking tone was there for you as always, showing you that your previous words only caused him amusement and an immense desire to continue messing with you. “You are a box full of surprises, ____. I think I'm starting to like you now. And yes, don't worry, I'm leaving so you can be alone. I’m going to leave you alone with one of your many brothers, one of my favorites. I hope you enjoy each other's company”.

Anything of the many things that you would have asked the clown about ‘this brother of yours’, you couldn’t do at that precise moment. Like a fading spirit, Pennywise had disappeared from the environment before the questions left your mouth and the shotgun that was lying on the floor as well. There was no trace that he had been there in the first place, nor was there any evidence that there was a shot that made it through the window at the end of the hall. You turned in that direction to check your suspicions and you were correct, the window glass was intact, with no break or crack in sight. However, to your surprise, there was something —someone — beside it, your gaze now fixed on the opaque shadow that loomed at the end of the hallway semi-blackened by the darkness of night. The form was human, the height of a child without a doubt, and it was beginning to stagger towards you, with the recognized sounds of footsteps echoing once more in the hallway of your house.

You didn’t know why you were still there, static, waiting for the shadowed human figure to reach your position, almost at the other end of the corridor. The door to your room wasn't really that far out of your reach, less than an impressively short 10 feet from you. You no longer had the obligation to continue with what the clown had left for you, you could leave when you most wanted to do it, you could lock yourself in the safety of your own room and stay hidden inside until dawn. But, for cosmic reasons that went far beyond you, you stood your ground in the hallway and also had the audacity to open your mouth to ask. “Robert? Are you Robert Dohay?”

In response, you heard a giggle come from the dark figure and then it was followed by a hideous sound of detachment, as if something was forcibly separating itself from something else it was attached to. You observed with horror that what you had heard detach before was the head of the shadow, now entirely separated from the rest of the body and rolling across the surface of the floor until it reached where you were standing, stopping when it touched the tips of your bare feet. There, under the little light that illuminated that stretch of the corridor, it was then that you saw it in great detail. The grotesque decapitated head of Robert Dohay. It was completely charred, the skin scorched a putrid black while the sparse hair anchored to its skull had been bleached to a grayish ash hue. Parched blood peeked from the side of his face, painting a dull crimson path that ran from near his temple to his jaw.

But among all the details you noticed, the one that shook you the most was his eyes. Not necessarily out of fear or disgust, but rather out of a disconcerting feeling of sadness. Those eyes without a gleam of life in them, those cloudy, watery eyes that gazed at you faintly as a tiny, trembling smile formed on his split lips.

“Are you going to float too, sister? Are you going to float with us? With all your siblings and the other kids? Is he also going to kill you for the simple fact of existing? I was just a 9 year old in 1908, I was just looking for Easter eggs that April 15th before the explosion happened. But that was not enough for him, it has never been enough that something other than himself kills us. He ripped my head off and left it in the top of a tree, where the police didn’t find it until three days later. He must have done similar or worse things to the others than to me. But to you? What is he going to do to you? Now you are his new favorite prey, he has you in his sights and he will not stop until he catches you in his claws".

Tears were now gushing out of his dull eyes, his tiny trembling smile had turned into a grimace of stormy despair and his husky voice of death that sounded even more broken than it had before when he spoke to you. "I fear for you. We all fear for you, little sister. We don't want you to float, none of us want you to suffer the same fate as us. Our father doesn't want that either. For 300 years, this cycle of hibernation and awakening has been consuming us, torturing our souls along with those of other innocent people. He… No, they… They said this cycle must end… They said the cycle must end with you…”

Mysteriously, you couldn't quite remember what happened after that, much less what you said and did in response. You only knew that both the decapitated head and the burned body of the boy ended up disappearing from your sight like a simple mirage and that you entered your room to lie on your bed, trying to reconcile the lost sleep that would return to you in the late hours of the early morning. But beyond those fleeting memories, the only thing you received in return when you forced your mind a few times to remember something else, was a severe and throbbing headache that made you give up on doing that to no avail. Maybe it was for the better, not remembering was the best option you had for now and it would stay that way for a long time.

 _It seems that the clown is right about something, after all. And is I prefer to take refuge in a lie rather than accept the truth_ , you thought that last thing before closing your eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah yes, where are my manners? Thank you for your attention and I hope we meet again when the next chapter is ready for you to see~


	11. Bloody Bathroom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “In there…” Beverly pointed to the white door at the end of the hall.
> 
> “What is it?” Bill asked quickly, looking at the indicated door with some intrigue.
> 
> “You'll see”, Beverly said in response, staring at him intently for a few moments before doing the same to you and you looked back at her, nodding slightly despite your inner nervousness to continue walking towards whatever was behind the door.
> 
> “It's her bathroom, guys”.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hahaha, I had to admit it. This one is strangely long, the longest of all chapters until now. That wasn't in my original plans, but I can't complaint either. I was missing like... wait, let me see the date... I was missing for THREE MONTHS... Also, I'm now in a new year that means new excuses for my delays... Yeah, no complaining from me here! XD
> 
> But seriously, sorry for the delay, I had this problem named writer's block for a long time (among with my addiction to videogames, especially Genshin Impact 'cause I LOVE playing that game and it's one of my favorites right now). Some work to do too, being an adult sucks :P Thankfully, my inspiration kicked out the writer's block from my mind and I had the time to sit and write something, anything. I guess the long of the chapter is like some sort of compensation for the wait... Yup, I just hope you enjoy the reading and don't find it too boring~

You could expect a lot from your friends, but a phone call in the middle of the early morning wasn’t one of those things. It wasn’t yet dawn on the horizon and the phone insisted on continuing to ring from the wall on which it was hanging, waiting until someone answered the call. You knew beforehand that neither of your parents was going to do it —your stepfather's snoring and the closed door to their room were proof that they were still asleep— so you had to get out of bed yourself and walk like a zombie to where the phone was ringing from the beginning. When you finally grabbed the phone and held it to your ear, saying first of all a yawning hello as you rubbed your fist across your sleepy eyes, you heard the voice of the person greeting you back on the other end of the phone line and quickly knew it was Beverly. You must have been very happy to listen to her and talk to her, but there was something different about the conversation that made you inevitably frown.

It didn't take long you to notice that her voice, her beautiful and charming way of speaking, wasn’t the same as always. Beverly sounded unusually nervous, almost scared when pronouncing certain words, without that flirtatious tone that excited you so much and made you laugh on multiple occasions. It was strange to hear her speak that way and you didn't hesitate to ask her the next second if she was okay, if something bad had happened to her or someone in her family. But of course, Beverly evaded all your questions. She didn't even flinch in trying to appease your obvious concern, on the contrary, she only increased it like a forest fire when she made the following request:

“Can you call them, ____? All of them? I would like to explain what happened, but… I can't. You wouldn't believe me even if I told you with all the seriousness in the world. It's better if you and the boys come to see it... At least that way they'll know it's real or not, if it's my imagination or something else. So are you going to call the boys? Tell me you can”.

Refusing her request wasn’t among your options. The growing concern you felt for her, the frustration that consumed you at getting more questions than answers, and Beverly's voice calling your name after a slow and awkward silence, were the determinants that kept you from saying anything but yes. A resigned yes that was later answered by a well-known phrase. That phrase that would be very well received by you if the circumstances had been different, because there was nothing more grandiose and emotional than hearing those words come from the lips of another person. Especially if that person was one of the closest to you. “I love you very much”, those were Beverly's last words before she hung up the call herself, leaving you there, all speechless and with the phone in hand like a motionless figure until you came out of your stupor a few seconds later. You put the phone back in its place and blew out a great breath of air.

Call the boys. Yes, that was more than clear, and of course you would (you promised to do it for your friend's sake). But not now, you weren't going to call them right then and there. You needed time to think, to think about what the hell you were going to say to the boys so that all of you could meet at Beverly's house and without having to explain the situation to them that you didn't even understand yourself. When you felt that you already had more or less an idea of what to say —and with your parents outside the house, working— then you decided to get to work.

For obvious and fairly understandable reasons, the first one you would call would be Richie. Talking to the other guys and getting them to go along with you without a lot of questions or comments in between, especially with Bill and Ben, was a relatively easy task for you. Richie, on the other hand, was your Achilles heel in that respect and you didn't doubt for a moment that he would look for any goddamn opportunity to divert the conversation some other way. So, if you were going to deal with Richie and his immense urge to take you off on a tangent until he gets at least a small taste of your curious personality (disgusted /pissed off at worst), then you would definitely make him your priority over the others. Always starting with the most difficult and problematic in anything was the best option to choose, right?

Before you could regret your decision and inadvertently do something really stupid, you dialed Richie's house number faster than light, patiently waiting for someone, anyone in the Tozier family, to answer the call. You had no problem with Richie's parents —Wentworth and Maggie Tozier— taking the call instead of him. You knew them and they knew you, that simple; if any of them came to pick up the phone, at most they would ask you how you are and how things are going with their son before diligently passing the call. Sometimes you asked yourself if that blind trust that Richie's parents had in you, without much questioning on their part, they also had with the rest of Richie's friends.

To your surprise, although you weren't really surprised, the one who ended up answering the phone was Richie Tozier himself. His peculiar voice being unmistakable from among others that could be heard faintly in the background, probably coming from a television that was not far from him. “Well, well, but it is my beloved ____ that speaks. To what do I owe the pleasure of this call at this early hour?”

“For something I consider urgent. I need you to give me your full attention, because what I'm going to tell you is important. Confusing and unexpected but important. Oh yeah, and I also hope that after I close this call, you'll call Eddie to tell him the same thing. Was that understood?” You said seriously, completely ignoring his attempt at imitating the voice of a gallant and in love man. Right now you weren't in the mood for his games.

“Clearer than water. I am all ears, my love”, Richie snapped, blatantly following up with the imitation voice. Was he not getting the seriousness of the matter? Was he really doing it on purpose?

“We have to see us. Today. Not tomorrow, not the day after tomorrow, but today. Do you know about Main Street’s bridge? Well, there we have to see each other because-” But that's where your explanation started when Richie brutally interrupted you with what seemed to be the laugh of his life, laughing almost like a madman on the other end of the line.

And you there with the phone no longer so close to your ear, looking incredulously at nothing in particular, not understanding the origin of Richie's uproarious reaction to your words. You didn't recall saying anything funny or amusing during the short conversation you had exchanged with him, so his exaggerated laugh had to be definitely out of place and out of context. You were more than willing to reproach him for something about it, but of course Richie was ahead of you by laughing.

“Hahaha! Gosh, ____! Why that bridge and not the Kissing Bridge? I don't know, it just doesn't seem very romantic of you... hahaha and let's not even talk about Eddie! Are you really that desperate for a threesome or what? Hahaha, you don't have to involve poor Eddie in something like that. A single kiss from you would send him straight to the hospital! I think a date just with me is enough to satisfy your needs”.

 _You, son of the great...!_ If the ability to travel through the phone and magically appear at Richie's house were possible, then you would use it exclusively to kill him. Because that was just what your enraged mind was imagining as you maniacally tightened your grip on the phone, that it was blameless in your sudden bout of frustration and anger. “What the fuck are you talking about, Richie?! At no point did I tell you anything about a date!”

“You didn’t do it? I thought that was what you were implying…” Richie said after hearing your direct exclamation towards him, his laughter gradually dying out over the seconds though not his copycat tone. “If this ‘urgent meeting’ of yours is not for a date, then why do you want to see me?”

“Of course it's not for a date and it's not just with you, you idiot! It's with all the Losers, I need to see you all! And before you drop another one of your sexual comments, no, it's not for an orgy. This is serious, Richie. Beverly called me at dawn and said she needed us for something. For what exactly? She didn't tell me, but she wants us to go to her house. She sounded nervous, Richie, very nervous and that's not normal for her. I know Beverly well, she is my friend, and if she asks me for something it is because she needs my help. If she wants us to go to her house, it is because she needs us there. That's what the meeting at the Main Street’s bridge is for. Meet on that bridge and then we go all together to her house to discover what is happening there, what the hell is it that has her so nervous. Now you get it, Richie? Or do you want me to spell it out for you?”

The silence that followed was —in one way or another— uncomfortably unbearable for you, but it also gave you a little bit of ease to breathe in and calm the emotions you had thrown in the form of words at Richie. Talking to him like that hadn't been your original intention; the plan of how you were going to explain the situation to him had subtly gone to waste from the moment you opened your mouth to answer him, throwing your exasperated frustration into exclamations and questions. Although, now that you were thinking about it more calmly in your mind, it wasn’t that abrupt change from one dialogue plan to another had been a complete disaster (you really didn't regret much of what you said, maybe you had been a bit impulsive but nothing else). What you wanted to achieve, you got in the end: all his damn attention.

Richie was quiet, still, the lack of conversation on the phone line was proof of that. You didn't have to be a genius to understand why he was silent. Richie was thinking, analyzing your previous sentences and realizing that from the beginning you had been getting very serious about this whole meeting business. He had screwed up taking your seriousness as a joke and now he had to apologize... in his own way, of course. He sighed. —Nope, I have more than understood. I guess now I have to call Eds and explain the same to him, right?

“That would be for the best, yes”, you answered back, quite surprised that Richie grasped the importance of the situation so quickly and that he put aside his joking tone to a more neutral one, almost as serious as yours. “But try to be more… subtle than I when you tell him. The Beverly thing, I mean. We don't want him to be alarmed or misunderstood”.

“Noted. Anything else to add?” He asked almost instantly and you blinked in puzzlement.

 _Now is he taking this to heart or what? Honestly, Richie, sometimes you surprise and confuse me in equal parts_ , you had that fleeting thought along with a somewhat shocked expression before parting your lips to say, “eh, no. I think nothing more”.

“Okay, right now I'm going to call Eds. Oh yeah, I'll also call Stanley to tease him for a bit and take advantage of passing the message to him. Two birds with one stone, isn't that great? You're so lucky today”, he said, giving you a momentary laugh. “So I take care of those two while you take care of Bill and the chubby-”

“That chubby guy is my friend and he has a name, you know?” You quickly interrupted Richie with your curt comment; you knew he hadn't said it in a contemptuous and thoughtless way, but for you it was better to be safe now than sorry later.

“I know, okay?! I've known him recently and it's normal that I forget his name, don't push me!” He exclaimed in response first and then he could continue with what he had planned to tell you before you interrupted him. “Well, since he is your friend, you must have his number and call him. Period. End of the problem. And as for Bill, don't waste your precious phone minutes on him. You two are neighbors. Go to his house, knock on his door and tell him everything you want to tell him. You can even take advantage of the visit to steal a kiss on the mouth~”

“RICHIE!” You yelled his name at the top of your lungs, listening to the return of his typical recklessness when talking about certain specific things that did nothing but tease you.

“Gosh, my eardrum! It wasn’t necessary for you to shout in my ear, you crazy girl that I love with everything I have to give. Just ignore what I just said and do what you have to do with those two, okay? See you at the Main Street’s bridge”. And just like that, he himself cut the call.

 _He didn't even give me the time to say goodbye properly… First Beverly with her 'I love you', then Richie being Richie. Who's next? Ben? I hope not, he is a very sweet and kind boy to do something like that to me_ , you thought that after a while, with your fingers now dialing the phone number of Ben's house and imploring in advance that this time there were no misunderstandings during the conversation. Although, knowing Ben and his way of being, something like that would happen was frankly impossible. An absolute zero.

It took a few seconds for someone to answer your call, and Ben wasn't that someone. The voice on the other end of the phone line was female and older than a child's, it was Ben's mother's voice. “Hanscom Residence, who's talking?”

"H-hello, Mrs. Hanscom, how are you? This is ____ Aubrey, a friend of Ben's. We are classmates from school”, you said quickly in response and with a slight tone of nervousness that you didn't know you had.

“Oh! You are ____? Yes, yes, my son has told me many things about you. Good things I must emphasize”, she laughed softly before continuing, “I'm fine, thank you very much for asking. But tell me, do you want me to put my Benny on the phone so you can both talk quietly? Because I'm assuming you called to speak to him, not his mother”.

You didn't know Ben's mom in person —the only thing you knew about her was her name, which was Arlene— but you were more than grateful that, despite not knowing you face to face, she didn't question you at all about the reasons for your call. _Maybe she thinks we're planning a friends outing like the one at the quarry_ , you thought that as you chuckled. “Are you a fortune teller, Mrs. Hanscom? Not that I think it's not fun to talk to you or something, but yeah, I would like to talk to Ben. We are planning a visit to a friend and he is a fundamental part of the plan”.

What you told her was not entirely a lie, it was only half the truth, since you had no valid reason to lie to her in the first place. Not when she hadn’t even shown interest in questioning the veracity of your words and simply told you to wait a moment as she notified her son that you were on the phone. Arlene Hanscom was a good woman, a good woman who as a mother wanted only what she believed was the best for her only child. That simple thought made you smile involuntarily.

“Hey, hello? ____? Something wrong? Hello?”

Ben's sudden voice asking for you on the phone snapped you out of your mind bubble. At breathtaking speed, you had to pull yourself together to respond to him and prevent him from worrying even more. “I'm fine, I'm here. It's that I was thinking about something and I lost track of everything, I'm sorry if I worried you about my lack of response”.

“Apology accepted”, he said, sounding somewhat relieved. “My mom told me that you wanted to talk to me about something we had planned. A visit or something like that”.

“Yeah that's right. Well, if I'm honest, I has been the only one who has planned everything but that is not the important thing here. I'm calling to let you know that all the Losers, including you and me, are meeting today at the Main Street’s bridge. We have to go to Beverly's house”, you explained directly but without giving many details at the same time, which you knew Ben would quickly notice because it seemed as if you were omitting one or another important element of the matter.

“Uh? I listened well? Did you say Beverly's house? Why are we going to your house? Beverly feeling bad? Has something bad happened to her?” The incessant amount of questions Ben threw at you over the phone only exposed his feelings; the extremely obvious concern and love he felt for your friend were hammering you in the ear without delay.

“Yes. Well, no. I really don't know, if I'm honest”, you said without restraint. “Beverly just called me and said she wanted us all to come over to her house to see something. Only that, she didn’t give me more explanations. She asked me to call the guys to let them know and that's what I'm doing”.

Unlike Richie, Ben's silence was so long that it even made you misunderstand its meaning, thinking that you had made him worry even more about Beverly with your poor choice of words. However, when you tried to say something else, whatever you could think of for the moment, Ben beat you to it. His voice was normal, but it also sounded unusually rushed like Ben was getting ready for something. “…It's alright. Maybe Beverly will explain more to us when we go to her house or I hope so. We don't have to pressure her to speak. See you on the bridge soon, okay?”

More explanations weren’t necessary, you simply affirmed what he said and he said goodbye to you a few moments later before hanging up. _Well, no doubt about it. Today is the day that everyone hangs up the phone before me. Bill is the last one and luckily I don't have to call him_ , you thought, sighing to yourself when you put the phone in its place and got ready to go to Bill's house to finish what Beverly gave you to do. You had your favorite backpack on hand and your skates inside it along with other little things that you wanted to take with you in case you needed them (the Ben’s incident taught you to be a little more cautious with certain things), there was no longer any impediment to go out. So you went to the door of your house and opened it, but were surprised by what you found on the other side of it. Who did you meet on the other side of the door.

There was Bill, his hand extended into a fist as if he had been about to knock on the door before you unexpectedly opened it; his bike lying on the sidewalk. If his expression was neutral at first, then now he was as surprised as yours and you could even say that he was also nervous when his eyes fell on you. “H-h-h-h-hi, ____! Great timing yuh-yuh-you have, you opened the door j-j-j-just when I was go-go-going to touch it!”

“Well, yes, even if it was by pure coincidence!” You exclaimed in response, laughing a little at the curious irony of the situation: you were going to look for him and he ended up finding you first. “I was about to go to your place right now, Bill-Billy, but you beat me to it”.

“Yuh-you… Are you be-being s-s-serious? Gosh, I’m so-so-so-sorry”, Bill said, scratching the back of his neck and smiling bashfully. “But well, yuh-yuh-you have me here. Do-do you need me f-f-for something?”

“Yeah, but let's get yours first. I can tell on your face that you want to tell me something, because I don't think you came here just to ask me if I need your help”; Bill opened his mouth to reply to what you said and you cut him off before he did. You knew him so well that sometimes you even knew what he was going to say to you. “No buts, my problem can wait a little longer. Whatever you come to tell me, seems quite urgent. So come on, tell me”.

Bill sighed. “O-o-okay, you win… It's a-about Beverly. Sh-sh-she called me a little while ago, sh-sh-she told me to go to-to her house that I had to s-s-see something. She also told me that-that the other guys wuh-wuh-would go. I-I wanted to ask if yuh-you were aware of this”.

You had to admit it, you really didn't expect it. You didn't expect Bill's important issue to be exactly the same as yours. _Beverly must be really desperate for us to go to her house. Did she think that I wouldn't be able to contact all of them? She called Bill herself_ ; you weren't stupid, that question in your mind could be a real possibility. But you didn't question for a long time the why of that, why she decided to call Bill herself even though she asked you to do it. By now all the boys —assuming Richie had already called Eddie and Stan— had been informed of the situation, all of you would meet at the same point and go see what the hell it was that was tormenting Beverly at her house. For you, there was no point thinking too much about something that in the end wouldn’t matter so much, something that wouldn’t help to solve the real problem.

“Of course yes. She called me early in the morning about going to her house to see something, and then I was the one who told to the rest. I was going to tell you too, but I can see that you already know”, you said when you crossed your arms while you looked at him amused by the slight blush of shame that now adorned his cheeks.

“Oh”.

“Oh? Is that the only thing you're going to say? Won't you ask me where we're meeting? Because I don't know about you, but not everyone knows how to get to Bev's house-“

“Y-y-y-y-yeah, of-of course I want to know! I-I don't know where sh-sh-she lives either. I'm j-j-just asking you not to u-u-use that tone with me...”

“What tone?”

“That yuh-yuh-you always use to make me look like an i-i-idiot... Yuh-you don’t have to s-s-say what I know you were go-going to s-s-say, I’m al-al-already embarrassed enough ri-right now, thank yuh-yuh-you”.

You had every intention of continuing to tease him to your delight, seeing his adorable reaction to your relentless but harmless use of pun. It was really worth continuing to catch a glimpse of that blush that spread beyond his cheeks, those blue eyes that avoided yours at all costs, and that remarkable distressed nervousness that was in his stutter. However, you didn't. Not now. Not when a friend needed help, not now that your friend was needing you and the boys for something. Teasing Bill could be left to later, at a more opportune and less delicate moment, so to speak. Going to Beverly's house was today's priority.

“Okay, I'll let it pass this time because we have to help our friend to solve a problem that we don't understand yet. But next time you will have no escape from me, Denbrough”.

Bill looked at you suddenly and with a raised eyebrow, incredulous at your seemingly serious tone along with the unexpected use of his last name, but he ended up smiling at you as he nodded to your previous statement. He knew right away that you were as worried about Beverly as he was and that you wanted to be fully focused on her situation, even though you weren't quite sure how to do it. You and being serious didn’t go hand in hand. “It’s un-un-understood. Can yuh-yuh-you tell me the place now?”

“At the Main Street Bridge, we'll all meet there”, you said after a long exhale, as if you were looking for some peace.

“W-w-what are we wait-waiting then? Let's go! I’m pre-pretty sure the others are waiting f-f-f-for us!” Bill exclaimed quickly to your surprise, suddenly grabbing your hand and dragging you with him in the direction of where his big bike was lying.

“Wait! At least let me put my skates on, I have them in my backpack!” You exclaimed back, but Bill seemed to purposely ignore what you were yelling as he got closer and closer to Silver, his beloved bike waiting for him on the sidewalk. “Bill!”

“I-I'm listening to yuh-you, ____. I-I think it's better to-to go together in Silver, that w-w-way we'll go f-f-f-faster”, you were speechless at his proposal and had to blink a few times to get out of your stupor. _Is this your revenge for teasing you a while ago?_ Bill didn't notice the change in your expression until he released your hand to pick Silver up from the street, pulling it upright on its wheels and then turning his attention to you. “W-w-what? Why do yuh-yuh-you look at me like that? Did I s-s-say so-something bad?”

“Nooope, not at all. Of course not”, you answered him with a voice that was somewhere between sarcastic and truly offended, maybe a little of both although it wasn't really to make him feel bad and he knew it, “I'm just surprised by your invitation. You know, go with you in Silver to "go faster". Are you implying that Righty and Lefty aren't as fast as Silver?”

"S-s-seriously, ____? J-j-just right now?” Bill laughed when he saw you crossed your arms and pouting straight at him, looking at him like he was one of those horrible monsters from the horror movies that anyone could watch in the Aladdin Theater. “Yuh-you know it’s not be-because that... I j-j-just don't want to repeat w-what happened the other time, not tuh-tuh-today”.

“Hmph. You mean the race we did the other day?” You asked in an innocent tone, as if you were completely ignorant of what would be a fairly obvious answer, but your sideways smile gave away your true emotions.

“Y-y-yes, the same one. Do-do you remember? I-I won the race and yuh-yuh-you wanted a rematch, b-b-but you were very tired, yuh-you almost passed out in the middle of-of the s-s-street. I was very s-s-scared f-f-f-for you and we had to post-postpone the rematch f-f-for another day”, he explained as he got on his big bike, sitting comfortably in its seat and gripping its handlebars with confidence. Now he was waiting for you, his gaze said so. “Well, I-I don't want it to be tuh-tuh-today. I-I promised you that we whu-whu-would do the rematch another day, j-j-j-just that it will not be tuh-tuh-today, alright? I-I suppose it's be-because of the Beverly thing, b-b-but today I f-f-feel uneasy...”

 _Well, yes, Bill-Billy, it's strange to see you looking uneasy. And it would be even worse for me to contribute to that state_ , you thought about telling him that although, of course, you ended up not doing it in the end and it wasn't because you had flinched or anything, but just something like that sounded better in your head than in physical words. You gave a snort of some disdain as a comment: "Ok, ok, we'll do what you say... but I'll still be waiting for that second race. Righty and Lefty are faster than Silver, I'm going to show you that soon”.

Bill answered you in the form of a slight shake of head along with a giggle, just that, nothing more. There was no longer room for more turns of conversation between you two, it was time for both of you to leave there and go to meet the others, all together for the help of a friend. So, after all, you ended up riding Silver too (reluctantly), sitting in the widest rear of the seat, with your body attached to Bill's back. Your arms instinctively wrapped around his waist so you wouldn't fall off Silver as Bill led all the way down Witcham Street and beyond to Main Street. And maybe it had been your mind playing tricks like the clown, but sometimes you swore to feel Bill tense for moments under your touch, whether it was every time you affirmed your grip on his waist when going around a curve or when you rested your head on his back to close your eyes and exhale a contented hum, enjoying his warm closeness. Did he still feel uneasy? Was he worried about you, not about Beverly?

You didn't ask him anything about it, you didn't want to bother him more than he already was. Besides, you didn't know why, but you also had this feeling that —even if you dared ask him about that or something else— he didn't seem very willing to talk at the moment either. His blue eyes were fully focused on the way forward and, a little ahead, on the other Losers who were waiting for both of them from the bridge. The said bridge that had been mentioned repeatedly during the course of the morning. There they were all, mounted on their respective bikes: Eddie talking to Stan about something that you still couldn't hear because of the distance, Ben was close to the two of them but didn't seem to contribute to the conversation, he was just paying attention to it, and Richie who smirked when he noticed you coming at the place together with Bill. Or better said: Richie chuckled at the sight of you arriving in Silver, with Bill driving it at his style while you hugged him from behind.

The shout that Richie gave to greet you and Bill, alerted the others of the closer and closer presence of both of you to the meeting place. You couldn't help but laugh a bit when you saw Stan give Richie a moderate smack on the head, as a clear warning to lower the volume of his voice, before he himself greet both you and Bill when you reached the bridge. Eddie and Ben greeted too, but each in his own way, with Eddie waving his hand while Ben smiled as he said a simple hello. Richie, now rubbing the back of his head and glaring daggers at Stanley, was about to blurt out one of the many comments he had in his mental repertoire when you decided to get ahead of him.

“No, Richie. Please no”, you said and he immediately shifted his attention from Stan to you, an eyebrow arched above the frame of his glasses.

“What? You don't know what he was going to say”, he replied.

“I know you very well, Richard Tozier. You are like an open book to me, I know exactly what you were going to say, believe it or not. Consider me a telepath”, you answered him back, looking at him like you were his older sister or something like that and you don't want him to contradict you right now. With your eyes you asked him to capture your subliminal message.

And maybe he ended up catching it, because after a while Richie stilled before your gaze while he falsely coughed. “Aha, you're one of the X-men… So are we staying here or what?”

That was surprising and unexpected (even for Richie himself), but no one said it out loud. With no more time to waste, you all decided to go with the plan to go to Beverly's house, leaving you in charge of guiding them in the right direction and you quickly pointed out an apartment complex. These apartments were actually not far from the Main Street Bridge, literally right after you passed it. However, knowing the level of absent-mindedness and lack of guidance of some (including you), getting confused in which of all the apartments she lived in was ridiculously possible. It had happened to you before —several times if you were completely honest— when you had to do those two-student homework projects with her. All the apartments were the same for you (and for the boys too), all painted in the same color without exception.

Fortunately, Beverly was outside, sitting on one of the steps of the metal staircase and smoking a cigarette while she observed her surroundings. When she heard the closer and closer voices of Stanley and Eddie talking to each other, it was then that she turned her head and didn’t hesitate to immediately get up to see from the railing. She saw you. You saw her and raised your hand in greeting. Beverly quickly threw the cigarette away as if it were a response mode and then began to go down —almost running— the entire staircase, but avoiding bumping into a little girl who was also walking around before reaching where everyone was together on the bikes.

“You came. I-I need to show you something”, Beverly said the instant she stopped in front of you and the Losers, her expression not auguring anything good apparently.

“What is it?” Ben asked immediately, seeing at her somewhat concerned.

“More than we saw at the quarry?” Richie chimed in before she could respond and you suddenly felt like face palm yourself for his stupidity. Right now wasn’t the best time to ask that kind of question, not however inoffensive it was.

Bill, Eddie and Stan all turned to look at him, but of the three boys, the one who reacted most notably was Eddie, angrily yelling at him. “Shut up! Just shut up, Richie!”

“Uff. What were you going to tell us, Bev?” You asked her calmly, pretending that the above hadn’t happened even though you were still looking at Richie out of the corner of your eye and he, as quiet as he could be, returned your gaze with a roll of his eyes behind his glasses.

“My dad will kill me if he finds out that I had boys in the apartment”, Beverly replied, looking at you first before landing her anguished blue eyes on the boys.

 _Of course, the boys..._ You lightly bit the inside of your cheek, feeling a little bad for her. Alvin Marsh, well, in a nutshell you could say that he didn't seem like a better father than Henry's. Of the few times that you had run into him at your friend's house, in all of them that man gave you a bad feeling. Beverly's father always made a terrible impression on you even if he didn't do or say something bad in front of you. But you didn't know what he really thought, said and did when you weren't there, when Beverly was completely alone with him and without a mother to do something, nothing, about it.

You looked at Bill and he, like a whole group leader, quickly took the reins of the matter by clearing his throat for everyone to pay attention. “W-w-w-w-we'll leave a lookout”, he said before waving at Richie. “Now Richie, j-j-just s-s-stay here”.

Bill got off Silver in a two-by-three and urged you to come down too, offering his hand in case you needed help even though you ended up not needing it in the end. The others didn’t hesitate to do the same as Bill, letting their bicycles fall to the ground —with the exception of Stan's— while everyone prepared to climb the metal ladder, with you leading the way as a guide for the rest (you thought Beverly was going to guide the boys, not you, but it wasn't that really important there and you weren’t complaining about all the attention shifted to you either). Richie reacted indignantly, waving his arms to try to draw everyone's eyes in his direction.

“Woah, woah, woah, what if her dad comes back?” He asked, his question directed at no one in particular and anyone could give him an answer.

The one who answered was Stan, turning to look at him with an expression close to exasperation as well as the movement of his hands before returning to the others. “Do what you always do. Start talking”.

“It is a gift!” Richie retorted out loud for all to hear as he sat in the seat of his bike, pining at being left behind and having to watch the area in case Beverly's father came unexpectedly. “I hate this motherfucker-”

“I heard that! Don't even think about saying it, Trashmouth!” You exclaimed before entering the apartment, but in the same way you could hear his laugh that came after what you said along with his shouted phrase: “You have more sensitive ears than a dog's”. Well, something to laugh at for now...

Because even though the walk to Beverly's home —door 5 with the Marsh surname below— wasn't so bad, the walk inside her house was. It was broad daylight, the sun was at its highest point in the sky, but the sunlight almost didn’t enter at all through the windows of the home. The lights of the same home were off, everything was dark, silent and there was a kind of strange tension in the atmosphere of the place. You couldn’t be the only one who perceived it, you looked at your friends and, just by seeing the expressions of each one, you knew that they could also perceive it. Even if you didn't show it much on the outside, you did feel very nervous when everyone suddenly stopped.

“In there…” Beverly pointed to the white door at the end of the hall.

“What is it?” Bill asked quickly, looking at the indicated door with some intrigue.

“You'll see”, Beverly said in response, staring at him intently for a few moments before doing the same to you and you looked back at her, nodding slightly despite your inner nervousness to continue walking towards whatever was behind the door.

“It's her bathroom, guys”.

Your own words didn’t reassure you and much less they would with Eddie, who didn’t take long to startle in his own way, beginning to talk paranoidly about toilets and hygiene as all of you together as a united group got closer and closer to the closed door of the bathroom. “Great, bringing us to the bathroom. You know that 89% of the worse accidents occur in the bathroom and kitchen. And that's where all the bacteria and fungi are... and it is not a hygienic place...”

Eddie's voice cut off and got caught in his throat as Bill, being the bravest of all there, stepped forward to grab the doorknob. The door swung open at his shove, making an annoying squeak that sounded like something out of a horror or thriller movie. But the scariest thing wasn’t that, the squeak of the door was nothing compared to the inside of the bathroom. Everything, and when you said everything, it was absolutely everything, was in red: from the largest objects such as the walls, the ceiling, the bathtub with its curtain, the toilet and the rest of the buildings in the same bathroom, to those not so large as the cleaning supplies that were scattered around, the mirror above the sink and the sink itself, the floor tiles, among many other things. Not a damn inch of the bathroom had escaped being stained crimson, nothing had escaped being stained with blood.

 _How the hell did she and her father bathe here? Brushing teeth? Practically doing any of her needs in this blood-covered bath?!_ All you saw was the color of blood. The same red color that painted Pennywise's nose and mouth, the same shade of red from his balloons, and the same reddish blood that spurted from his victims. _This is his doing, isn't it? It is the only explanation. I'm not the only person he's tormenting anymore and maybe I never really was…_

“I knew it!”

Eddie's exclamation took you out of your thoughts and it didn't take you long to pretend that you were on top of what he was saying for who knows when, replying to what he exclaimed with an tentative but unremarkable mocking voice that could resemble Richie's if the situation wasn’t so bizarrely dire. “Congratulations, you are a prophet”.

“Do you see it?” Beverly asked quickly to both of you.

A simple yes was Eddie's answer while you chose to nod your head, still seeing all that wet blood, freshly crimson, everywhere covering Beverly's bathroom. How could you take your eyes off such a scene that took up your entire range of vision? You didn’t know about the thoughts and reactions of others when seeing so much blood, but you told yourself that you wouldn’t stop seeing its color for a long time. You weren't really traumatized, just shaken by the overwhelming amount of the vital red liquid touching everything in its reach... which was, well, the damn full bath.

“What happened in here?” The long-awaited question Bill asked to Beverly wasn’t that bad on the spot either, of course.

“My dad couldn't see it, I thought that I might be crazy”, that was what Beverly replied, although her response didn’t help at all to resolve the grotesque, present scenario.

“Well, if you're crazy, then we're all crazy”, Ben commented in a short, graceless laugh, not realizing that he was somehow right in saying that. You heard Stan gasp after what Ben said, nothing more, and nothing less.

 _God, if only everyone knew the truth..._ You thought wearily to yourself, watching Bill walk cautiously into the bloody interior of the bathroom before the silence of the rest. And maybe you imagined it, but you noticed that in his left eye there was a slight nervous tic when he dictated to the group a: “We c-c-c-can't leave it like this”.

“Ah, shit… Well, you all heard Big Bill, let's get do some cleaning”, Eddie sighed in a defeated tone, patting Ben on the shoulder along with a look for Stanley and to you to follow him while he gave some quick instructions before starting the cleanup. “Beverly, do you happen to have those yellow cleaning gloves? Because we are going to need them... and rags, many rags. Buckets, brushes, two mops, and garbage bags too”.

It was fortunate that many of the cleaning supplies Eddie requested for the whole "Bathroom Cleaning" operation, Beverly had available at the house. Although luckier was when the missing minority of necessary things could be achieved thanks to you, thanks to the money that you had intentionally put in your backpack (then you would charge the boys for your generous support, emphasizing the pros of being a cautious person and ready for any type of situation). The guys' gestures of thanks/appreciation towards you, along with a kiss on the cheek from Beverly, were great and made you feel important. You smiled like an idiot, but like a happy idiot, and the interaction with Richie wasn't left out of that either.

For you, his expression of curiosity and confusion when you gave him the money along with a short spoken list of what he had to buy urgently, was priceless. You had to push him a bit on his bike to rush him to the store while telling him that you would cover his 'lookout post' in the meantime, promising you would explain everything to him in great detail later. Upon hearing what his reward would be if he did what you asked, Richie accepted your order in his most flattering style and quickly pedaled away, only to return a few minutes later with what you needed at hand. It was then that you fulfilled what you promised, telling him about the scene you had seen inside Beverly's bathroom and the cleaning that everyone —except him, obviously— would do to help her… well, with that.

You didn't know if Richie believed the truth of your words or took it all as a joke, since you related it so quickly that it seemed to be nothing more than a joke, but you didn't have the time to ask him either. You gave him a short hug, saying fleeting thanks in his ear and grabbing the items he had brought you before running towards the metal ladder to climb up to where the others were. Everyone already had gloves on and with cleaning objects in their hands, each one beginning to agree on which area or thing to clean first.

“Why did you take so long?” Stan asked you, handing you a pair of gloves as Eddie was looking at the merchandise you brought in and telling the others a few final little details.

“Would you believe me if I told you it was Richie's fault?” You asked back and Stan laughed softly, looking at you with a mildly amused face.

“Possibly, although he's also probably not entirely to blame. You’re very easily distracted and forgetful at times, am I wrong?” You were going to answer him in reproach when he just decided to give you a mop, smiling at you subtly because he knew that he had canceled what would be your defense phrases. “Maybe that is not important right now. Go ahead, grab it. The earlier and faster we start cleaning up this mess, the sooner we can finish. Doesn’t seem good to you, ____?”

“If you say so, then it must be true. Stan the Man has never failed me, so yeah, that's fine with me”, you gave a somewhat childish laugh, which also made him laugh at times, before taking the mop in your hands and starting to do your assigned chore. “All together in the cleaning of a bloody bathroom... Who would say it? It’s an uncommon day”.

Some chuckles were heard later; the group dynamics cleaning the bathroom was exceptional in almost every way, with each one focusing on something. Beverly used a damp cloth to wipe the blood off the mirror and scrubbed the sink with a brush, clearly clean water flowing from the tap. Ben wasn't far from her, sneaking a peek to her when the opportunity presented for him while he took it upon himself to clean the adjacent wall. Another one who removed blood from the walls was Stan, although he also took care of a window that was around, cleaning it in a pattern that only someone with OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder) could do. On the other side, Eddie, Bill, and you were left, all three of you busy in other sections of the bathroom.

Eddie preferred to focus on the smaller objects in the place next to the toilet itself (for reasons unknown to you), with his inhaler in his mouth and grunting in disgust every time he squeezed the blood absorbed by his rag into the bucket. Bill had at his disposal a mop to whiten the floor tiles and, like Eddie, every so often he had to pour the accumulated blood from it into another bucket that was exclusively for him. The amount of blood in Eddie and Bill's buckets was absurdly large, but you far exceeded them. Your bucket was the whole fucking bathtub, stagnant water mixed with blood almost to the brim, and all because you decided not to remove the plug from it until you felt that the part of the ceiling you could reach with the mop was spotless enough to move on to clean the bathtub itself.

The bathroom was resuming its original appearance step by step. Clean, neat and with almost no blood traces in sight. The buckets of bloody water were emptied into the bathtub and the black garbage bags, being full of the used items, were taken to the garbage container that was on the outskirts of the building. Eddie, Stan, and Ben were in charge of carrying the bags while you, Bill, and Beverly were discarding the last bits of blood in the bathtub. The three engaging in a spontaneous yet interesting conversation about the Summer Fair to kill the remaining cleanup time.

“Yuh-you never went to the S-S-Summer Fair Derry?” Bill asked Beverly.

“No, I think not. That I know”, she replied in response and you couldn't help but snort.

“Like seriously? I can't believe it… Why didn't you say it before? Now I know that for the next fair I have to invite you yes or yes”, you said, smiling as you winked at her just as she would do with you if the situation was reversed.

Beverly gave a little laugh and nodded at what you said, giving you a playful nudge before addressing her word to Bill, but still paying attention to you. If it weren't for the dirty gloves, she would probably be poking one of your cheeks right now because of the funny expression you had on your face. “What about you, Bill? Have you been in the Summer Fair Derry as many times as this girl?”

“I-I go every year...” He replied slowly, a detail that to you was curious and strange in equal measure. It was like if Bill had thought very well what he was going to say next, because it seemed as if he was omitting something on purpose. “But on-on-once I went with Richie and I won be-be-because I hit the target. But there were s-s-so many prizes, I-I didn't know which one to-to choose…”

And with that, the topic of the conversation unexpectedly changed to another even though you weren’t really aware of it. Your attention was rather focused on the figure that was standing in the middle of the hall, near the bathroom door. It was Ben and he didn't look very upbeat, like he was sad or depressed, you could see it in his expression. When he noticed your gaze on him, instead of saying hello or anything else to you, he simply shook his head slightly and continued on his way, carrying a full garbage bag in hand. _How weird_ ; you didn't lack the sudden urge to chase him, look him in the eye, and ask him what was wrong with him. Bill and Beverly were too engrossed in their conversation, both talking about something you didn't even know what it was about and you weren't interested in knowing right now, to figure out whether or not you were leaving. They probably wouldn't notice your disappearance just yet, so you decided to take advantage of the circumstance.

You left the bathroom unnoticed and walked to the outside, at the beginning of the metal staircase of the apartment. Down below, a few feet away, were the Losers near a giant garbage container. Ben was there too, but he didn't look as downcast as before. On the contrary, he grinned as he tossed his garbage bag into the dumpster just like Eddie and Stan.

 _Did I imagine everything?_ You thought as you listened to Richie's screams in the background, declaring that whoever dropped the bag at the highest would be the winner. _I guess it doesn't matter anymore… Everything is fine now, right?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not related with this story... But if you're interested in Genshin Impact, then I'm glad to tell you that I'm writting a new first story for its fandom. Maybe you can give it a look? If you really love Genshin Impact, Venti (all Mondstadt's characters in general too), and being a protagonist ('cause why not), then I'm sure you may like it~ You can give it a try, it's free! XD
> 
> Well, that's all for today. Thank you for your attention, you're a fabulous reader and a great person! See ya again when I'm back from my traveling across Teyvat~


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